All language subtitles for Dan.Cruickshank.and.the.Family.That.Built.Gothic.Britain.2014.1080p.WEBRip.x264-CBFM

The St Pancras Grand Midland Hotel

in London

is a Gothic Revival masterpiece,

a Victorian fairy-tale palace,

a cathedral of commerce.

For years unloved and abandoned,

now resurrected to its former
glories.

But behind its facade,
lies a dark secret.

On Thursday, in early May 1897,

a real-life Gothic
tragedy took place here.

It was a tale of madness,
alcoholism,

religious conflict
and sexual scandal.

It happened in one of the hotel's
warren of more than 300 rooms.

Nobody knows exactly where the
ghosts from a Gothic past reside.

A 57-year-old man
lay on his deathbed, disgraced,

forgotten, broken.

His body ravaged by cirrhosis
of the liver and heart disease.

He had been a heavy drinker.

His estranged family gathered
around the bed to bid him farewell,

and this included
the 16-year-old son

he had only ever met once before.

This moving, Gothic scene took place
within the masterpiece

designed by the late
father of the dying man.

The family were the Gilbert Scotts

and their tale is the greatest story
Charles Dickens never told.

Over three successive generations,
the Scotts enjoyed triumph, wealth

and acclaim, but also suffered
controversy, tragedy and scandal.

As a dynasty, they shaped 19th
century Britain and beyond.

They helped to give the greatest
empire in history

its look and identity.

They believed they could beautify
Britain by rebuilding it

in the Gothic style...

..at the same time as embracing the
glory of God and the power of money.

They took the language of the past
and built the future.

The Gilbert Scotts were inspired
architects who took the historic,

Gothic style of Britain,

adapted it to the industrial

and technological world
and, in the process,

paved the way for the architecture
of the 20th century.

The first of the great Scotts,
as we could call them,

was George Gilbert Scott.

He's one of the most prolific,
brilliant

and controversial architects working

in Britain during the 19th century.

He spent a lot of his time
on trains like this,

travelling around the land to
visit his various projects.

And while travelling by train,
he would

while away the time completing
a rather personal journal.

He wrote, for example...

"So far as
I was personally concerned, my love

"of Gothic architecture was wholly
independent

"of books relating to it.

"None of which, I may say,
I had seen at the time

"when I took to visiting
and sketching Gothic churches."

Scott's passion for the Gothic was
aroused as a boy growing up

in rural Buckinghamshire.

He was born in the village
of Gawcott,

where his father was the vicar,

so Scott was
surrounded by Gothic churches.

At the age of 16, Scott set
off from his humble origins to

seek his fortune in London.

He became an architect's apprentice,
but his first boss moaned

that Scott wasted his time doing
drawings of medieval buildings.

The young architect could see
the future in the past,

but he would have to wait.

After the death of his father
in 1834, the career of this

fledging architect was forced down a
rather un-Gothic and ungodly route.

In that year, new legislation
led to the building of scores

of workhouses for the poor,

like this one in Northampton

designed by Scott in the classical
style

when he was in his early 20s.

This is a raw and chilling building,
and a reminder that Scott

started his career designing in the
late Georgian, classical tradition.

Anyone who has read Dickens will be
well aware of the cruelty

and abuses associated with
the workhouse system.

But for struggling young
architects like Scott in the 1830s,

the sudden boom in the construction
of workhouses offered a gravy train.

It was tempting to ask no questions
and jump aboard to make money.

Later, Scott would call this work
dirty and disagreeable,

but he needed the money because
he had a young family to support.

Scott toiled hard and built
about 40 workhouses...

..as well as Reading jail...

and an asylum for orphans at
Wanstead in Essex.

Scott was, perhaps, typical
of his age, God-fearing, ambitious,

hard-working.
A bit of a snob about his family.

Desperate to make the social climb,
fearful of fall.

And, I'm sad to say, he didn't
look like a sort of typical

romantic Goth, with his piercing
eyes and mop of hair.

But to judge by later portraits,
a balding

and rather conventional mutton
chopped bank manager.

Typical, I suppose,
of a businessman architect.

And business dictated that he

designed workhouses in the
classical style,

but his true passion in life
was the Gothic.

Scott had a profound
knowledge of medieval buildings

and had a very good eye,
as well as a good understanding,

of how they were constructive.

And he was caught up in the great
enthusiasm for the Gothic, combined

with the religious revival which
occurred in the 1830s and '40s.

And then he read Pugin, and he talks
about how he was somebody

that had awoken from a dream by
the thunder of Pugin's writings.

And after that, he wanted to be
a Gothic revivalist.

Pugin was the architect who gave
the Gothic Revival a programme

and a manifesto
and Scott was a keen apostle.

It was in Oxford, the city
of dreaming spires,

that Scott designed one of his
finest

and most revealing Gothic Revival
buildings,

the chapel of Exeter College.

The chapel, constructed in the late
1850s, is something of a surprise.

It's very large and it's based

on a mid-13th century French
prototype -

the Sainte-Chapelle -
the Royal Chapel

on the Ile de la Cite in Paris.

A modest early 17th century chapel
was swept away from this grand,

sophisticated, metropolitan
construction. Very ambitious.

But Scott wanted to make it
the centre of a reconstructed

Gothic world.

Scott adhered to Pugin's principle

that Gothic architecture reigned
supreme

because it was Christian and
structurally refined

unlike the classical, which
he believed was pagan in origin.

He was a Gothic magpie, who copied
the details from Sainte-Chapelle

in Paris and other churches he'd
visited on the Continent...

..with saints enveloped in exuberant
canopies,

grotesque gargoyles
warding off evil spirits...

and the most slender of spires
pointing to the heavens above.

Mmmm.

As with the Sainte-Chapelle,

the glory of this building
is its interior.

Huge windows allowing God's
light to flood inside.

Light manipulated, made sacred
by colour, by the stained glass.

It's also a monument to authentic
Gothic construction.

Stone vaults, stone ribs,

restrained outside by these
massive stone buttresses.

The buttresses follow a key
principle of Gothic

architecture - honesty.

Their beauty comes from their
functional perfection.

The inspiration of Sainte-Chapelle
was very direct.

Scott had visited the chapel
during his French tour of 1847

and made a series
of studies of the chapel.

These are shafts, column shafts,
grouped together.

Capitals and from the capitals
spring these lovely,

minimal stone ribs.

And between the ribs,
areas of stonework.

He thought it beautiful,
but also, he believed it to be

the ultimate
expression of the Gothic

system of construction in which
shafts and capitals and ribs

and vaults and decoration were all
working together in happy harmony.

The same thing could be
said about Scott's life.

He was the archetypal self-made
Victorian man,

who was busy building a dynasty.

In many ways,

the story of the Scott dynasty
could be a novel by Charles Dickens.

Great Expectations crossed with
Nicholas Nickleby and Bleak House.

It's a story of a battle for
success, a fear of failure,

light and shade, life and death.

George Gilbert Scott had five sons
with his wife, Caroline Oldrid.

Scott's favourite son was number
three, Albert Henry.

He won a scholarship to
Exeter College

and studied here amongst
his father's Gothic buildings.

Scott doted on the boy
and wrote proudly about his academic

achievements in mathematics
and science.

The future looked rosy.

By now, the family lived in the
idyllic village of Ham in Surrey.

Home was the grand manor house.

Scott's hard work had paid off
and he was a wealthy man.

But, as in a Dickensian melodrama,

where there was triumph,
tragedy lurked nearby.

In January 1865, Albert Henry
caught a chill

while boating on the Thames
and fell gravely ill.

Scott rushed home to
be at his son's bedside.

I have in front of me,

reproductions of the handwritten
pages from Scott's Journal.

This was what
he wrote about Albert Henry.

"He seemed to wake from some
fearful dream

"and with the fullest conviction,
that he was in the world of spirits.

"He told me he had seen the torments
of the lost

"and he was filled with the most
intense horror."

Think of this, your favourite son,
cradled in your arms and dying.

He tells you he's been to Purgatory.
He's seen the suffering of the dead.

He's terrified that he's going to
return and join them

in their suffering, and there is
nothing you can do to help him.

The horror, the intense horror that
Scott must have suffered.

After three days of mental
and physical suffering,

Albert Henry died aged just 20.

He was buried in the churchyard
at nearby Petersham in

a tomb designed by his father.

Death robbed Scott of his son,

but it also presented him with
an opportunity

to seal his
reputation as a Gothic trailblazer.

Poignantly, when Albert Henry died,
Scott was designing

a memorial for another Albert -
the husband of Queen Victoria.

His death at the age of 42 in 1861
had left the Queen

overwhelmed by grief.

The Albert Memorial is a most
extravagant affair.

Gothic, sacred architecture, used to
celebrate the life of one man.

It's inspired by a ciborium, which
is the canopy erected in a church

over the high altar.

But here, the altar has been
removed and instead

is an image of Albert.

Or indeed has the altar been
removed?

Is Albert actually
sitting on the altar?

In which case, this is surely
somewhat blasphemous.

Certainly, the glittering statue
of Albert has a god-like presence.

But this is much more than just
a monument to grief,

the Victorian
equivalent of the Taj Mahal.

It gave regal pedigree to the
new national style.

The memorial marked the
coming-of-age of the Gothic Revival.

When completed in 1872,
it was hugely popular

and soon became a national icon.

It also carried a particular message
about the nation's aspirations,

ambitions, achievements,
about empire.

It suggests that empire,
the conquest and exploitation of

distant lands, was validated by what
Britain could bring

to their inhabitants.

It creates an image of civilisation
and superiority,

of virtue and dignity,

of Christian
values and technological progress.

There's one detail
I particularly love.

There's a portrait
of George Gilbert Scott.

He had himself inserted there
amongst the great architects,

past and present.

So, the son of a country vicar had
made it at last to the high

table of architectural culture.

Queen Victoria was so delighted
by this memorial to her beloved

husband that, in 1872, she made
George Gilbert Scott a knight.

If churches and monuments had made
Scott's reputation,

they were not the limit to
his ambition for the Gothic Revival.

He wanted to take it much further.

One of Scott's lesser-known,
but most intriguing buildings,

lies hidden near this woodland in
Nottinghamshire.

It's his only country house.

And its design gave him
the opportunity to disprove what

he called that absurd supposition
that Gothic architecture is

exclusively
and intrinsically ecclesiastical.

The old Kelham Hall had been
destroyed by fire in 1857

and the owner, the local squire

and Conservative MP,
John Manners-Sutton,

chose Scott to rebuild
it in the fashionable Gothic style.

Designing Kelham Hall gave Scott
the opportunity to experiment

with the Gothic language.

He wanted to demonstrate that he
could design a country house

that was comfortable,
convenient and modern, yet Gothic.

Scott didn't want to replicate
an esteemed Gothic model,

as he had done slightly earlier with
the chapel at Exeter College.

He wanted to create something new,

an authentic 19th-century Gothic
architecture.

The result is somewhat curious.

A bit of a mix
and match affair, really.

It doesn't look like a church,
nor particularly does it look

like a country house.

More, I suppose,
like a public building.

A Town Hall roomed
in the countryside.

Golly, this does
feel like a public building.

This double height, medieval-style

Great Hall with masonry vault
with ribs. Incredible scale.

And also, the corridor has a vaulted
ceiling -

most unusual for a country house.
Not cosy, certainly.

Also...feels like a church, despite
what Scott wanted to achieve.

This was the withdrawing room,

but there's a central column,

this shaft, making it feel rather
like a cathedral chapter house,

so the inspiration is
ecclesiastical.

These shafts are marble,
but below them, iron,

wrought iron, you see?

And beautiful, wrought iron capital
mould stone, but wrought iron.

But this Victorian pile has
a sinister, Gothic tale to tell.

Well, tell me about the man for whom
this house was built,

John Manners-Sutton.

John Manners-Sutton,
very respectable on the surface,

MP for Newark on two occasions,
fine, upstanding

man in the local community,

an excellent aristocratic fellow.

But of course underneath
this veneer, there was dark,

deep undercurrents of a Gothic
nature.

He was absolutely a horror
to his wife.

He committed vile acts of cruelty
over a long period of time.

And the initial cause of this
ghastly treatment?

She found out
that her husband was committing

adultery on a serial level,

in other words, with many,
many women, in Kelham Hall itself.

Good heavens. He brought his doxies
back here his and misbehaved,

almost in front of his wife?!
Yes, indeed.

And this is really someone who is
behaving as a monster.

While working on Kelham Hall,
Scott won a commission,

which seemed like the chance
in a lifetime to take

the Gothic Revival to new
heights in the secular realm.

But it drew him into a battle
of wills with the most powerful

man in the land,
the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston.

It was over a new building
for the Foreign Office in the heart

of British Government at Whitehall.

It was potentially the most
important

and high profile
job in Scott's career.

Certainly, it was the longest.
In the end, it went on for 21 years.

And it was very lucrative,
bringing in £35,000 in fees.

But I would suggest that also,
it was the most humiliating job.

It was a key conflict
in the mid-19th century

battle of the styles, which pitted
the virtues of the Gothic

against the might of the classical.

Scott, of course,
believed in the Gothic.

Gothic was the national style,
it was rational,

it was Christian and he was
determined to show what he could do.

But Palmerston was horrified
by the idea that Scott was going to

Gothicise
the whole of Whitehall.

He felt he had to resist this
tide of pointed arches.

Once his Gothic design had been
rejected by the man

he calls "my archenemy", erm,
"had become autocrat of England",

he came up with a compromise which
was Byzantine.

Palmerston took one look at it

and said it was "neither one
thing nor t'other.

"A regular mongrel affair".

So, Scott had to think,
should he resign on principle,

but he really believed that the job
had come to him by providence. Yes.

And he wasn't going to give it up.

So, in the end,
he did as he was told

and produced an extremely
creditable classical design.

It was almost unthinkable -
the Gothic evangelist built

a temple to the classical.

Just as Scott was losing
the biggest architectural

battle of his life, the grim reaper
came back to haunt him.

This is Scott's Journal
for March 1872.

Now... "A terrible
blow has fallen upon me."

His beloved wife Caroline had died.

It led to much soul-searching
and to guilt.

He says, "Oh, my dearest wife...

"If thou canst hear me now, forgive
the faults which thou knowest

"but too well."

Really broken man.

Scott designed this beautiful
tomb for Caroline in the churchyard

at Tandridge, the Surrey village
where they'd been living.

One of the reasons Scott may have
felt he'd neglected Caroline

was he'd been working obsessively
on a major new commission.

After the grief of losing
both his wife and the battle

of the styles, it seemed the last
chance to restore his self-respect

and win back his reputation
as a leader of the Gothic Revival.

It wasn't a cathedral or a palace or
even a country house.

It was a bustling
hotel for a railway station,

but this is a grandiose design that
transcends commercial function.

It proclaims to the world what
would have been

if the Foreign Office had been
built in its original Gothic vision.

When the Midland Railway Company
launched a competition to find

an architect for a hotel
and offices for the new

St Pancras Station in London,
Scott entered a design that was much

larger and more expensive than the
brief.

But amazingly, he still won.

The Midland Grand Hotel is arguably
George Gilbert Scott's masterpiece.

Some critics argue
that it's architecturally too

grand for a mere railway hotel, but
that surely was to miss the point.

This was the Cathedral of its age,

celebrating new technology,
improved communications, progress.

It gave the modern world the
pedigree of history.

Scott used Gothic detail
and allied it with bold

and modern methods of construction
to produce a building that

has vigour and originality.

I love this marriage between heroic
Victorian engineering

and the Gothic revival architecture.

The architecture was beautiful, full
of crafted details and ornament.

Lovely brickwork.

This granite shaft here,
this stone shaft,

whereas engineering is ruthless,
unadorned,

simply wrought iron plates
riveted together.

Simple and honest expression of the
means and materials of construction.

Stepping inside is like entering
another world -

a world of glamour and excess.

The grand staircase is
the architectural

showpiece of the hotel.

It floats through space in the most
impressive manner.

And also, it reveals a brilliant

and eclectic mix of architectural
influences.

Together, these reveal the richness
of Gilbert Scott's imagination.

The masterstroke of his vision
is how he marries

Gothic Revival principles to
modern construction methods.

He takes the past
and paves the way for the future.

This is the ladies'
coffee room as was

and it's fascinating here to see
how, in public rooms like this,

major public rooms, Scott fused
medieval building traditions

with modern building
technology to forge a new

and distinct Gothic
style of architecture.

Between these lovely granite
columns, very traditional,

between these columns and the wall,
you can see these beams

standing, but those beams are
in fact made out of wrought iron.

Here, the essential structure is
exposed

and in the Gothic spirit ornamented.

It's incredible, really,
those gilded details being in fact

the rivets holding the wrought
iron plates together.

The hotel was pioneering.

Radiators heated the corridors

and ceiling cornices were perforated
for ventilation,

and had the first passenger lift
in London, now gone.

When it opened in 1876,

the Midland Grand Hotel
was state of the art...

..but as tastes and fashions changed
its popularity waned.

It closed as a hotel in 1935

and became railway company offices
before being abandoned.

For years it lay neglected
and faced demolition.

But miraculously it has been
restored to its former glories

and is once more a fitting testament
to the genius of

Sir George Gilbert Scott.

Scott died in 1878.

He'd done much single-handedly
to give Victorian Britain

its aesthetic language

and transform the Gothic
into a national style.

Where better to be buried than
the medieval Gothic masterpiece of

Westminster Abbey?

In total, he'd designed or restored
at least 850 buildings.

His death was not the end of
the Scott dynasty.

He had a son, a brilliant son,
who's capable of developing

the Gothic language of architecture
into the later 19th century.

The son was also called
George Gilbert Scott,

but has been known rather cruelly
to history as Mad Scott.

It was always going to be a struggle
following in the footsteps

of such a successful
and famous father.

Middle Scott enjoyed
a privileged education,

but he would never escape from
his father's shadow.

He was a gifted architect,

we know that from his surviving
drawings and buildings...

..but it was impossible to live up
to his father's great expectations.

To make it worse,

misfortune and the loss of
some of his best buildings

have diminished his legacy.

Well, Scott Junior and his father,
their relationship was complicated.

But George Gilbert Scott Junior
worked closely with his father

on a number of restoration projects,

not least that of rebuilding
the spire and tower of

Chichester Cathedral
after it collapsed,

but I think he was
temperamentally different.

He was certainly more refined,
but his two finest buildings,

the two London churches,
Kennington and Southwark,

were badly damaged in the
Second World War and then destroyed.

So we just have photographs now of
St Agnes, Kennington.

It was in its day
almost a revolutionary building.

This looked at the late Gothic and
it sought refinement and elegance.

In many ways it was in the, as it
were, the High Victorian tradition

of urban churches -
very bare on the outside.

And the glory of
St Agnes, Kennington,

it's quite clear from
the photographs,

was the interior,
and that's what impressed me.

Middle Scott is a tantalising
figure.

While his father's legacy
seems to be everywhere,

you have to hunt for examples
of his genius.

I've come to a very remote location
on

the edge of the north Yorkshire
moors

to see the best surviving Gothic
church

with which middle Scott was
involved.

The church is named
St Mary Magdalene Eastmoors,

and there it is in front of me.

Gosh, this is exciting. Ah!

Golly.

It's small, of course, I knew that.

But I can see, architecturally...

it's very big indeed.

This is a sign post to where
the Gothic Revival was going.

Pretty amazing little bellcote.
There it is, the tower...

with a pyramid.
Strange and inventive details,

not directly dependant on
Gothic prototypes,

but this is an invention in
the Gothic spirit.

Look at the door -
it's absolutely fascinating.

You have...

this slab of masonry, smooth
with very little ornamentation.

This big, very simplified...

Gothic moulding around
the top of the portal.

And that's it. Otherwise, plain,
abstract, simple, modern.

And there's no great carved
corners detail,

just the edge of the roof coming
down

and these lovely water spouts,
no gargoyles.

Oh!

The nave.

Well...

sophisticated, simplicity.
The roof is wonderful. Wonderful.

It's a medieval-style wagon roof,
that's what they're called,

pointed with a ridge.

But it has an utterly modern feeling

because it's so reduced,
so minimal in a way.

It's a celebration.

It's celestial, the heavens, it has
a feeling of joy.

It's important down below

and then this wonderful
sophisticated shape

and colour up there.

And the lovely tiny beams slightly
cambered up in traditional manner

with stencilling.

Again, very playful,
just little flowers. God's creation.

Another thing which is fascinating,
fascinating,

here in front of me...

What appears to be, again,

a very modern, abstract and strange
window is in fact

an ancient medieval tradition.

This is a squint,

a medieval idea, so that people in
the aisle would stand there

and have a view through here
of the high alter.

And the reredos is lovely too -
very much of the period.

Of course, more obviously directly
Gothic.

This building is charming
and very important.

It's been given much more of the
simple language of the modern age,

where direct reference to history
is to a large degree abandoned,

and pure Gothic form
and spirit is being used

to create a 20th century
architecture.

Fascinating, fascinating,
and important.

Within such a small building
lurks such a big idea,

lurks the modern world.

Middle Scott experimented with
different architectural styles,

of which his Gothic father
wouldn't have approved.

This can be best seen in Hull,

where he designed a number of houses
in the suburbs.

George Gilbert Scott Senior
wanted to demonstrate that Gothic

was appropriate for all types of
buildings, churches of course,

but country houses, museums,
hotels, railway stations.

His son, middle Scott,
had a somewhat different idea.

Yes, Gothic for churches,
or even public buildings,

but for domestic architecture
he wanted to go back to

the English classical tradition
called the Queen Anne Revival.

Wonderful example here of
middle Scott's work.

Queen Anne really is an earlier
style, early 17th century.

His idea really, I suppose,
was that this type of architecture

represented the great English
domestic tradition

and made more comfortable homes.

Scott's palate of materials and
variety of details is fascinating.

Very attractive.

Red brick, white painted joinery,
white areas of plaster.

The details are Classical,

the mask up there
appearing from foliage,

very lovely, sort of
early 17th century.

I think these panels are
particularly interesting. Look here.

You see triangles impressed in
what would be plaster or concrete.

Very hard. Lovely.

It's a sense of ornament achieved in
the most abstract and minimal way.

Middle Scott was clearly his own
man.

He branched out further from his
father in 1874

when he set up Watts & Co.

The company today run by his
great-great granddaughter,

Marie-Severine de Caraman Chimay,

who has some ribald tales to tell.

Lots of stories like he used to go
to the opera house

and measure a lady's bottom
with his dividers.

I heard this!

Now I hear you say it,
I have to believe it!

I think we have to believe it cos...

when you read about what he's done
and all about his life,

yes, you can see that probably he
did this.

He was obsessed with anything...

Anything had to be aesthetic,
designed.

He wanted to like everything
he had at home,

so if you didn't
like a plate of a bit of crockery,

he would just smash them on the
floor. As a child?

I think as an adult as well.

I know the feeling.
I often do it myself.

Do you have pictures? Yes!

I mean, they loved partying,
so that's them in fancy dress.

Absolutely fascinating.

He's had a few brandies, maybe.

He's smiling at her with,
seemingly, affection.

She's looking a little bit unamused,
isn't she?

We have one remaining drawing he did.
Oh, really?

Oh, design for a wallpaper,
I suppose.

Probably.

I mean, we're still looking
and studying it to find out.

This... So this was designed by him
for the company? Yes.

It's the only one you have.
It's the only drawing that we have.

And then on, the other hand, we have
examples of... That's a wallpaper.

This is similar, but not the design.
No, it's not the same.

But we haven't got
the original design,

but we know that's one of
his...designs.

And it's quite nice.

I was looking through the stock book
the other day of 1878

and it's already in there,
and we're still doing it today.

It seems that middle Scott,
unlike his workaholic father,

was an eccentric dandy.

Then disaster tipped him
towards madness.

In 1870, middle Scott's house
and studio in Cecil Street,

off The Strand,
was destroyed by fire.

He lost all his drawings,
his beloved library,

in a sense, his identity.

That would be enough to drive
you mad.

Enough to drive me mad.

He started drinking heavily

and seemed to rebel
against his family background.

He had a complete mental breakdown.

First of all, was he rejected
something of what his father

stood for by becoming a Roman
Catholic,

although he waited
until his father was dead.

This caused a breach certainly
with his brother John Oldrid,

who inherited Sir Gilbert's practice.

And after that, his behaviour became
extremely erratic and distressing.

I don't think it had anything to do
with architecture.

Indeed, his architectural ability
remained quite unimpaired.

He designed the Roman Catholic
church of St John the Baptist

in Norwich,
today the cathedral of East Anglia.

It turned out to be his largest
work

and surely would have made his
father proud.

But his life was unravelling.

His brother tried to have him
committed for lunacy...

..so middle Scott fled to France,

where he set himself up with a
French mistress.

On his return,
things only got worse.

Middle Scott's behaviour became
increasingly bizarre

and disruptive, to put it mildly.

In consequence, he was abandoned
by his outraged wife,

who no doubt feared that middle
Scott's behaviour would plunge

the family into social disgrace.

They put middle Scott
here for a while,

in the St Andrew's Hospital,
Northampton, a lunatic asylum,

which strangely has in its grounds
a splendid Gothic chapel

designed, of course, by
Gilbert Scott Senior.

Strange coincidence.

While here, middle Scott, I suppose
out of desperation, out of anger...

..wanted protest, attempted to burn
the hospital down.

I have a lot of sympathy for
middle Scott.

His odd behaviour was due to
mental illness

and his family didn't behave
with much sympathy,

support or understanding.

The Times waded in and accused
John Oldrid

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.

You never think that one of
Britain's most intriguing

19th century architects lies buried
here, not much of a monument,

just an off-the-peg slab
with a cross on it.

Let's have a look.

Let's have a look.

No-one has bothered 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, have mercy."

Middle 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 in

the slipstream 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 a 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.

He remarked, "I always think
that my father was a genius,

"who was a far better architect
than my grandfather,

"and yet look at the reputations of
the two men."

Giles once commentated that he only
met his father twice,

and one of these meetings
was on his father's death bed,

so it's hard to see how middle Scott
could have inspired Giles

to take on the baton of
the Scott dynasty.

We know that Giles was encouraged by
his energetic mother

and taken under the wing of one of
his father's former colleagues,

who 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 to just
preserve the Scott legacy,

but to reinvigorate it.

His opportunity came sooner
than anyone could have expected.

In 1901, 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,
"You know, I've done a few

"because we do things like that
in the practice."

"OK, let's put them on the table."

And she put everyone around the
table and they all worked on
drawings,

finishing the stones and everything,
details, and he won the competition.

Of course, the competition was
an anonymous competition.

Yes, and he won.

No-one knew he was one of
the Gilbert Scotts.

And he was only 21.

For the easy-going young man,
this was Wonderland.

It was his chance to bring
the Gothic into the 20th century

and prove it was still relevant to
the modern age.

The reredos at the high alter 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 increasing bold simplicity.

And look at that strange bridge,

like a factory walkway.

This is not so much the house of
God, but a power house.

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.

It was the perfect marriage of
the Gothic and modernist.

He is 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,

instead are cliff-like areas
of plain wall, wonderful utilitarian

oblong windows
and that large window.

That's a strangely un-Gothic
quadrant side

and, over there, the wall's
bevelled.

This is Gothic, but Art Deco Gothic.

Giles would work on the cathedral
throughout his life

and he would go on to produce
many other buildings that combined

a modern sensibility
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, there's 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, which had
been bombed 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's 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.

It's 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 invokes 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.

What 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
every built -

the greatest temple of power.

It worked.

I now declare the Tate Modern open.

A disused temple to power became

the nation's most popular temple to

the arts.

I imagine that the idea that
Bankside should become

an art gallery would have been
beyond Scott's wildest dreams.

But it's such a beautiful,
sound structure

that is has proved to be
astonishing and 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.

It 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 the materials of construction.

And faithful to the Gothic Revival
principle -

decorating the essential
structure...

..so the functional beams and rivets
become the building's ornaments.

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.