4/4 Dan Cruickshank and the Family that built Gothic Britain

support or understanding. The Times waded in and accused John Aldred of operating out of fury, out of anger. He was so put out by the affair his brother had been having with the anonymous French lady. There was to be no reprieve for Middle Scott. He died in 1897, at the age of 57, of cirrhosis of the liver, brought on by his heavy drinking. His final days were spent in the Midland Grand Hotel, his father's Gothic masterpiece. Why remains a mystery. Could dying there have been homage to his great father or some kind of twisted revenge? He was buried in the cemetery of St John's Parish Church in Hampstead, near where he'd lived with his family before everything started to go wrong. Well, well, well, well, well, well. You'd never think, would you, that one of Britain's most intriguing 19th-century architects lies buried here. Not much of a monument. Just a sort of off-the-peg slab with a cross on it. Let's have a look. No-one's bothered for ages to clear the brambles away. In memory of George Gilbert Scott, FSA sometime Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. Well, well, well. On whose soul Jesus has mercy. Little Scott had genius, but his life was blighted by scandal, family conflict and mental illness. I suppose it was impossible for him to follow successfully upstream of such an ambitious and successful father. So, in his way, he rebelled and followed a different path, a path that led him initially to sublime Gothic architecture and ultimately to grotesque Gothic tragedy. Perhaps the most touching epitaph to middle Scott came from his son, Giles, who hardly knew his father. Giles remarked, 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. Giles once commented that he only met his father twice, and one of these meetings was on his father's deathbed. So it's hard to see how middle Scott could have inspired Giles to take on the pattern of the Scott dynasty. Giles was encouraged by his energetic mother and taken under the wing of one of his father's former colleagues. He would work in the brave new world of the 20th century when modernist architects were determined to consign the Gothic to the dustbin of history. It was up to Giles not just to preserve the Scott legacy, but to reinvigorate it. His opportunity came sooner than anyone could have expected. While still training, he entered a competition for the design of an Anglican cathedral for Liverpool. It's impossible to overestimate the size and importance of this job. It was only the third new Anglican cathedral built in this country in the 350 or so years since the Reformation. More than 100 architects competed. When the competition for Liverpool Cathedral was open, his mother, who I think was probably a good character, came around and said, Giles, where are your drawings? He was like, I've done a few because we do things like that in practice. OK, let's put them on the table. She put everyone around the table and they all worked on the drawings, finishing the stones and everything, details, and he won the competition. The competition was an anonymous competition. Yes, and he won. No-one knew he was one of the Gilbert Scotts. For the easygoing young man, this was Wonderland. Was his chance to bring the Gothic into the 20th century and prove it was still relevant to the modern age? The Reridos at the High Altar is a thorough essay in medieval Gothic. But look in the other direction, towards the part of the cathedral constructed from the 1920s, and you can see, emerging from Gothic form and detail, the world of modern architecture, characterised by soaring lofty spaces and an increasing bold simplicity. And look at that strange bridge. Like a fancy walkway. This is not so much the house of God, but a powerhouse. It's a brilliant fusion of the Gothic and the modern. This becomes clear once you delve beneath the skin of the cathedral and see how it's built. I'm in the crossing tower. Astonishing modern industrial construction. Below me is the vault, which one can see from the body of the floor of the church. Stone, I believe, but also areas of concrete there. But above me, all this reinforced concrete construction. The walls, strong modern brick. Of course, an entirely different atmosphere to the body of the cathedral below. Inside, the bell tower is like a skyscraper. An almost shocking contrast to what's outside. But it remains faithful to Gothic revival principles. Giles Scott rejected the modernist view that ornament is a crime and sought to graft the best ideas of modernism on the best traditions of the past. For him, it was the perfect marriage of the Gothic and modernist. He's honest about the materials and means of construction. At the same time as humanising the building by adding details inspired by the past, he's looking to the future. Outside, you can see more clearly how Scott forged a modern architecture by evolving the Gothic tradition. Here, Gothic details are reduced. Inside, there are cliff-like areas of plain wall. Wonderful utilitarian oblong windows. And that large window has a strangely un-Gothic quadrant aside. And over there, the walls bevelled. This is Gothic, but Art Deco Gothic. Giles would work on the cathedral throughout his life and would go on to produce many other buildings with a sense of flexibility, with a respect for history. I'm on my way to Scott's masterpiece. Along the Thames, we can take in some of the other highlights of his career. First, the iconic Battersea Power Station. In the 1930s, Giles designed the chimneys in the style of giant classical columns. After the Second World War, he was brought in to help rebuild the Palace of Westminster, during the Blitz. And there's his smallest and perhaps best-known design, the telephone box. We pass under Waterloo Bridge, completed in 1945 to Giles' designs, before we reach our destination. It's opposite St Paul's Cathedral, and I believe it links the Gothic revival of George Gilbert Scott with his grandson's modern take on the Gothic. This is the former Bankside Power Station, now known as Tate Modern. Bankside is Giles Gilbert Scott's greatest and most ruthless expression of his modernistic brick cathedral, industrial style. The great chimney in the centre of the composition reveals this to be a functional industrial building, and yet it evokes memories of medieval towers, giving the structure the sublime and sculptural presence of a structure rooted in history. Like his grandfather's masterpiece, the Midland Grand Hotel, for many years Bankside was reviled and threatened with demolition after its closure as a power station in 1981. Gavin Stamp led a campaign to save it. It's a fantastic space. It's like a great ship or a cathedral. Just think what you could do with it, and yet it's going to be demolished. As far as I'm concerned, that is a crime, for this is the finest power station ever built, the greatest temple of power. It worked. I now declare the Tate Modern open. A disused temple to power became a nation's most popular temple to the arts. I never imagined the idea that Bankside should become an art gallery would be beyond Scott's wildest dreams, but it is such a beautiful, sound structure that it has proved to be astonishingly adaptable. He built the great, refined, sublime landmark, and thank goodness it's found a new use. Tate Modern is a wonderful building, and the cathedral-like turbine hall, a magnificent space, enshrines the architectural principles of the 19th-century Gothic revival and is a testimony to the creative brilliance and continuity of the Scott dynasty. It's an honest building, expressing truthfully the methods and materials of construction, and faithful to the Gothic revival principle, decorating the essential structure. So the functional beams and rivets become the building's ornament. The artistic journey to Bankside, over three generations of the same family, has revealed a surprising and dramatic link between the Gothic revival and modernist architecture. It's no exaggeration to say that the story of the Gilbert Scott dynasty is a story of British architecture from the early Victorian era to the 20th century. Thanks largely to its efforts, the Gothic revival became more than simply a rehash of history. It became a foundation stone of modernism. From the heart of our Gothic season, and with Halloween just peering over the horizon, we've a classic BBC thriller here on BBC4 for you next tonight. Stay with us for the life and loves of a she-devil in just a moment.