Although he was not born in the city of Liverpool his legacy makes him one of our own.
Born in Hampstead, London on the 9th of November 1880 into a Roman Catholic family of architects, Giles was the third son of George Gilbert Scott, Jr, a man with severe mental health problems who had little influence in his son's life, with Giles claiming to remember seeing his father only twice in his life. The only decision his father took concerning his son's future was to send him to Beaumont, a Jesuit school in Windsor, as he approved of J.F. Bentley's design of the school buildings. From an early age his mother decided that he and his brother Adrian were to become architects and took them on bicycles 'steeplechasing' around the Sussex countryside.
Giles grew up at Hollis Street Farm at Ninfield in Sussex, which he had received, at the age of nine, as a bequest from an unmarried uncle. His mother was given the life tenancy and was able to use this venerable property to escape from her increasingly difficult husband and to continue to live here until she died in 1953, aged 99.
In 1899 Giles became articled for three years to Temple Lushington Moore, who had been a pupil of Giles' father, and it was here he got to know the works of his father who he told John Betjeman, "I always think that my father was a genius. He was a far better architect than my grandfather and yet look at the reputations of the two men!" Here, when still a young man, he saw the possibility of designing in Gothic, without the profusion of detail that marked their work. He was noted for his blending of Gothic tradition with modernism, making what might have been functionally designed buildings into popular, perhaps even iconic, landmarks such as Liverpool Cathedral, Battersea Power Station, and many others including college buildings and other smaller churches or annexes to churches.
When the competition for a 'Design for a twentieth century cathedral' was announced in 1902, he began work on the drawings at his home in Battersea in his spare time. He was surprised to be one of the five architects selected for the second round of the competition (his employer's designs were rejected) and even more surprised to win, in 1903 at the tender age of 21 years.
When the committee had learnt of the decision to employ an inexperienced 22-year-old Roman Catholic, they imposed one of the assessors, a more senior and experienced architect George Frederick Bodley, as joint architect. Although a close family friend, the partnership was not a success, tastes were different, and Bodley was busy building two other cathedrals in the U.S. Four years later, with only the Lady Chapel and foundations complete, and Giles on the verge of resigning, Bodley died suddenly in 1907 allowing Giles in 1910 to firstly modify his original design and then to convince the committee to change it radically with a single central tower instead of the original proposal for twin towers. His new plans provided more interior space and at the same time modifying the decorative style, losing much of the Gothic detailing and introducing a more modern, monumental style. On Tuesday the 19th of July 1904 the Foundation Stone was laid by King Edward VII at a great open-air service at the culmination of which the choir of a thousand voices sang Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah.
While he had been feuding with Bodley in Liverpool, he managed to design and see built his first complete church. This was the RC Church of the Annunciation in Bournemouth in which he made a high transept similar to what he wanted at Liverpool. Other churches built by him at this time show the development of his style, the ones at Ramsey on the Isle of Man, Northfleet in Kent and The Church of St Paul in Derby Lane, Stoneycroft, Liverpool. Also, at All Saints Church, the parish church of Wigan, in a triangular garden is a Grade 2 listed war memorial of 1925 designed by Giles.
During the First World War he was a Major in the Royal Marines, in charge of building sea defences on the English Channel coast. While working in Liverpool, Giles had met and married Louise Wallbank Hughes, who was a receptionist at the Adelphi Hotel in the city centre. His mother was reportedly displeased to learn that she was a Protestant but the marriage was a happy one and lasted until Louise Scott's death in 1949. They had three sons, one of whom died in infancy.
The completed Liverpool cathedral when finally built was the longest in the world and one of the splendours of 20th century design. The designing down to the smallest detail and supervising its building, dominated Giles' life. Work was curtailed during the first war, but sufficiently advanced by 1924 to justify consecration, the tower being finished in 1942 during another war, which saw damage from enemy bombs and work again ceasing.
Sir Giles in 1924 had his design accepted, in a competition launched by the Royal Fine Arts Commission for a new telephone kiosk to commemorate the Jubilee of King George V, and to this day the Cathedral proudly boasts the resultant red K6 cast iron box being housed in his largest creation. No tourist visit to Liverpool Cathedral is complete without a picture of the red telephone boxes near to the tower complex.
The building of the Cathedral lasted the whole of his life and he remained involved in the project until his death in 1960, refining the design as he went. He designed every aspect of the building down to the fine details. With the choir and the first pair of transepts completed, King George V and Queen Mary saw the Cathedral consecrated in 1924. In bitterly cold weather on 20th February 1942, Sir Giles Scott placed the final stone on the final 'finial' at the top of the tower, three hundred and thirty one feet one and a half inches (101 metres) above the Cathedral floor. Although the tower was finished in 1942 the first bay of the Nave was not completed until 1961 after Scott had died. When Giles died, with the first bay of the nave incomplete, as a Roman Catholic he was buried in what was planned to become the porch for the West door. Tightness of funds meant that the cathedral when it was finally finished in 1978 was a bay shorter and Giles found himself under a black cobble cross in the middle of the road. In 2012 he was moved to a more suitable spot opposite under a fine stone designed by his son.
The Cathedral is the largest in the UK and the fifth largest in the world.
see also:- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2021/03/a-liverpool-exemplar-maude-royden.html
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