John Oldrid Scott

• Born:     1841
• Died:     30 May 1913

John Oldrid Scott, the second son of (Sir) George Gilbert Scott was born in 1841 and was educated at Bradfield before being articled to his father in 1860. By the late 1860s he had become principal assistant to his father, but despite increasingly fragile health, George Gilbert Scott remained firmly in charge of the practice until his sudden death from a heart attack on 27 March 1878. Despite having had no formal partnership with his father, John Oldrid Scott inherited the practice, and was admitted FRIBA on 2 December that same year, his proposers being Charles Barry Junior, George Edmund Street and Benjamin Ferrey. He continued to produce Gothic designs in a style current fifty years before, having “accepted his father’s architectural faith implicitly and carried it out religiously.”

Among his designs were those for Lahore Cathedral, Grahamstown Cathedral, St Mary’s Slough, the Greek Church, Moscow Road, Bayswater, the Training College and Chapel at Ripon, and Bradfield College Chapel. Works of restoration included Tewkesbury Abbey, St Michael, Coventry (the tower and spire), St Mary’s Shrewsbury, Beverley Minster and St Mary’s Beverley, and Southwark Cathedral. In Manchester he was responsible for St Paul’s Church Oldham Road.

In his later years John Oldrid Scott was assisted by his son Charles Marriot Oldrid Scott, born in 1880. Charles Marriot Oldrid had been articled to Reginald Theodore Blomfield in April 1898 and returned to his father's practice in 1902. The following year he had obtained a place with George Frederick Bodley to widen his experience, before returning to his father's office as partner in 1904.

John Oldrid Scott died on 30 May 1913 at Bexhill after a short illness and was interred at Peasmarsh near Rye. In 1868 he had married Mary Ann, eldest daughter of the Rev Thomas Stevens, rector of Bradfield and founder of Bradfield College. His wife and nine children survived him.

The Times obituary said of him “Mr Scott lived a very quiet life, not mixing much with his professional brethren, and taking no active part in the various questions often discussed with more or less acerbity at professional gatherings. In fact, he avoided any kind of réclame. He was not an architectural genius, for genius will not be confined within the limits of a formula; but he was a sound workman in his own chosen province of architecture, and no one better upheld the dignity of the profession.

Obituary              The Times (London, England), Monday, 2 June, 1913, page. 11