the office from 1873 to 1876. From 1868 he was professor of architecture at the Royal Academy, a post which he filled with great distinction. His lectures were published in 1879 as ‘Mediæval Architecture,’ 2 vols. An enterprise with which Scott was actively associated was the establishment of the Architectural Museum, now located in Tufton Street, Westminster.
In 1872 he received knighthood in consideration of his works for the royal family.
On 19 March 1878 his health began to give way, and he died from a heart attack on the 27th of the same month. He was buried on 6 April in Westminster Abbey.
The principal works still in progress at the time of his death were the refitting of the choir at Canterbury, the restoration of Tewkesbury Abbey, the great hall of Glasgow University, the cathedral of Edinburgh, the church of St. Mary Abbotts, Kensington, the restoration of St. Alban's Abbey (since continued, though on different lines, by Lord Grimthorpe), works at Beverley Minster, the Hook memorial church at Leeds, and the restoration of the cathedrals of Salisbury, St. Davids, Lichfield, and St. Margaret's Church, Westminster.
Scott married, on 5 June 1838, a second cousin, Caroline Oldrid (her sister married his brother, the Rev. Thomas Scott). By her he had five sons, two of whom, George Gilbert Scott, F.S.A., and John Oldrid Scott, followed the profession of architecture, and carried out some of the works left unfinished at his death.
In 1838, shortly after his marriage, Scott established himself at 20 (now 31) Spring Gardens, where he continued to conduct his work till the end of his life. He changed his residence in 1844 to St. John's Wood, afterwards to Hampstead, and in 1864 to Ham. About 1870 he left Ham for Rook's-nest, near Godstone. In 1877, after a short return to Ham, he removed to Courtfield House, South Kensington, where he died.
The ‘Builder’ (1878, p. 360) contains an incomplete list, dating from 1847, of 732 buildings or projects with which Scott was connected as architect or restorer or as the author of a report. Among these are 29 cathedrals, British or colonial, 10 minsters, 476 churches, 25 schools, 23 parsonages, 58 monumental works, 25 colleges or college chapels, 26 public buildings, 43 mansions, and various small ecclesiastical accessories. Besides the buildings already mentioned, special allusion may be made to the chapel of St. John's College, Cambridge, the additions to New College, Oxford, the Leeds infirmary, the column to commemorate the Westminster scholars who fell in the Crimea, the horseshoe cloisters, Windsor, and the restoration of St. Cuthbert's Church, Darlington.
The principal works of cathedral restoration not already mentioned were those at Chester, Worcester, Chichester, Gloucester, Rochester, and Exeter. The work at Chichester consisted chiefly of the rebuilding of the tower and spire which had collapsed in 1861. At Chester very extensive external renovation was thought necessary, owing to the extent to which the old stonework had become decayed. The restoration at Exeter led to litigation over the ‘reredos,’ in which the propriety of the use of sculpture was discussed (Phillpotts v. Boyd, L. R. 6 P. C. 435). Minor works were carried out at Winchester, Durham, Peterborough, Bangor, and St. Asaph.
Of Scott's style as an original artist it may be said that, starting (in his maturer practice) with a marked prejudice in favour of the fourteenth-century characteristics of English architecture, he subsequently changed his views, adopting in domestic and secular work a modification of Gothic, and inclining in church work to that importation of French models of the thirteenth century which prevailed among his contemporaries. In a design submitted (1875) in conjunction with his son, John Oldrid Scott, for the parliament house at Berlin, he attempted to realise a development at which German Gothic might have arrived had it not been for the submission to French influence. In restoration he showed an unrivalled power of searching for evidences, and a remarkable fertility in following up a clue or conjecturing an original design from a few remaining fragments.
That Scott, as the greatest of architectural restorers, should have been the object of severe attack was natural. Certainly he sometimes remodelled rather than restored, and more than once his critics were successful in convicting him of an excessive energy in renovation. In the last year of Scott's life the growing opposition to the prevalent practice of architectural restoration with which his name was identified took definite form, and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings was inaugurated.
Scott was an enthusiastic though not an accomplished writer. He published, besides various pamphlets, 1. ‘A Plea for the Faithful Restoration of Ancient Churches,’ 1850. 2. ‘Remarks on Secular and Domestic Architecture,’ 1850. 3. ‘Gleanings from Westminster Abbey,’ 1862.
Many architects were trained in his office
