Gilbert Scott and the Chapel of Exeter College, Oxford

Abstract

‘The greatest fa presto in architectural history’, as Paul Frankl called him — although there are plenty of other contenders for that dubious honour — Gilbert Scott occupies an ambiguous place in the history of English architecture. The sheer volume of his work, and its lack of stylistic consistency, disturbed his contemporaries and have continued to vex later writers. Yet the history of the Gothic Revival cannot be written without him, and through some of his buildings he helped shape its future course. Among these buildings was the chapel at Exeter College, Oxford, begun in 1856 and finished three years later. The survival of a substantial collection of drawings and correspondence in the college’s archives enables us to establish and reinterpret the significance of this magnificent and still somewhat under-appreciated building.