Sir Giles Gilbert Scott OM RA FRIBA (9 November 1880 – 8 February 1960) was a British architect known for his work on the New Bodleian Library, Cambridge University Library, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, Battersea Power Station, Liverpool Cathedral, and designing the iconic red telephone box.

[1] His paternal grandfather was Sir (George) Gilbert Scott, a more famous architect, known for designing the Albert Memorial and the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras Station.

A bequest from an uncle in 1889 gave the young Scott ownership of Hollis Street Farm, near Ninfield, Sussex, with a life tenancy to his mother.

[12] R. Norman Shaw was an eclectic architect, having begun in the Gothic style, and later favouring what his biographer Andrew Saint calls "full-blooded classical or imperial architecture".

[n 3] The choice of winner was even more contentious when it emerged that Scott was a Roman Catholic,[n 4] but the assessors' recommendation was accepted by the diocesan authorities.

[18] A historian of Liverpool Cathedral observes that it was generous of Bodley to enter into a working relationship with a young and untried student.

[3] Scott complained that this "has made the working partnership agreement more of a farce than ever, and to tell the truth my patience with the existing state of affairs is about exhausted".

[5] In 1910 Scott realised that he was not happy with the main design, which looked like a traditional Gothic cathedral in the style of the previous century.

[26] By 1920, the workforce had been brought back up to strength and the stone quarries at Woolton, source of the red sandstone for most of the building, reopened.

[3] Other churches built by Scott at this time, at Ramsey on the Isle of Man, Northfleet in Kent and Stoneycroft in Liverpool, show the development of his style.

[28] While working in Liverpool, Scott met and married Louise Wallbank Hughes, a receptionist at the Adelphi Hotel; his mother was displeased to learn that she was a Protestant.

[29] Scott's residential buildings are few; one of the best known is the Cropthorne Court mansion block in Maida Vale, where the frontage juts out in diagonals, eliminating the need for lightwells.

Shortly after his work on the nave at Downside Abbey he was commissioned to design the small Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady & St Alphege, Bath, the first part of which was completed in 1929.

The building was designed by the company's chief engineer, Leonard Pearce, and Scott's role was to enhance the external appearance of the massive architecture.

[n 8] He opted for external brickwork, put some detailing on the sheer walls, and remodelled the four corner chimneys so that they resembled classical columns.

At the time of its opening, The Observer, though expressing some reservations about details of Scott's work, called it "one of the finest sights in London".

[41] In his presidential address he urged colleagues to adopt what he called "a middle line": to combine the best of tradition with a fresh modern approach, to eschew dogma, and recognise "the influence of surroundings on the choice of materials and the technique of their use.

… My plea is for a frank and common-sense acceptance of those features and materials which are practical and beautiful, regardless as to whether they conform with the formula of either the modern or the traditional school.

[1] His biographer A S G Butler commented, "In an attempt to be polite to these – which vary from late Gothic to Victorian Tudor – Scott produced a not very impressive neo-Jacobean design".

Unable to reconcile these differences Scott resigned in 1947; a competition was held and won by Basil Spence with an uncompromisingly modern design.

[45] After the immediate rush for building work caused by war damage had died down, Scott put a new roof on the Guildhall in the City of London and designed modernistic brick offices for the Corporation just to the north.

Scott created the design of the Trinity College Chapel in Toronto, completed in 1955, a lovely example of the perpendicular Gothic, executed by the local firm of George and Moorhouse and featuring windows by E. Liddall Armstrong of Whitefriars.

[47] Although originally planned in the 1942 design for the west end of the cathedral to be within a porch, the site of the grave was eventually covered by a car park access road.

[49] A requiem mass for Scott was celebrated by Father Patrick Casey at St James's Roman Catholic Church, Spanish Place, London, on 17 February 1960.

[52] On 9 November 2020, the 140th anniversary of Scott's birth, he was honoured with a Google Doodle depicting his red telephone boxes.