Scott, William Alphonsus (1871–1921), architect, was born 1 September 1871 in 19 Aughrim St., Dublin, eldest son of Anthony Scott (1845–1919), architect, and Kate Scott (née Hayes). Anthony Scott was clerk of works to Thomas Newenham Deane (qv), superintendent of national monuments for the Board of Public Works, before setting up his own practice in Drogheda. William was educated at the Classical School in Manorhamilton, Co. Leitrim; at St Finian's Seminary, Navan, Co. Meath; and at the Metropolitan School of Art, Dublin. From 1887 to 1890 he worked at his father's Drogheda office, followed by three years (1890–3) with Sir Thomas Newenham Deane & Son in Dublin, after which he returned to his father's office for six years. During this period he continued to study and travelled to London to sit architecture exams; he took first place in specifications, sanitation, and hygiene in the final associateship examination of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in 1898, as well as winning the silver medal in the examination set by the Society of Architects in London. Like his father before him, he also spent six months with the Board of Works on the repair of ancient monuments, which left him with a lifelong interest in early Irish architecture.
In 1897 father and son won the competition to design Enniskillen town hall; the building, completed in 1899 in the renaissance revival style, was widely admired and was described by Irish Builder as about ‘the best designed and arranged town hall in Ireland’ (30 January 1901). After this success Scott went to London, where he remained for three years, working briefly with Fred Chancellor & Son, for whom he designed a technical school, and then spending two years in the superintending architect's department of the London County Council (LCC), then a centre of progressive architecture. Here he was introduced to the arts and crafts movement, and readily took on its entreaty to use local materials, local craftsmen, and vernacular styles. The fire brigade centre and adjoining terrace of cottages he designed for West Hampstead were a successful adaptation of the style of two leading architects of the movement, Philip Webb and Charles Voysey. Promoted rapidly, he was appointed to the permanent staff of the LCC but resigned his position in June 1902 to take up a partnership in his father's office, then relocated to Dublin. However, within a short period he set up on his own at his house in Hollybank Road, Drumcondra.
Scott began to gain an Irish reputation with Killyhevlin House in Enniskillen, designed 1903 for William E. Hurst and comprising roughcast walls, square tower, and timber staircase with heart-shaped perforations – a familiar arts and crafts motif. The nationalist landowner Edward Martyn (qv) heard, as he later put it, ‘vague talk of there being a young architect somewhere in Ireland who was also an artist’ (quoted Gwynn, 218) and secured his services in designing a new parish church at Spiddal, Co. Galway. St Enda's church (built 1903–7) drew on Scott's fascination with early Irish architecture – the tower was derived from Slane abbey and the interior arches from Creevelea abbey. An important monument of the Celtic revival, its style was described as Hiberno-Romanesque, but it was free interpretation rather than imitation; Paul Larmour calls it more a development than a revival of Romanesque. Martyn hailed the church as the first wave in a fresh vigorous tide of architecture in Ireland, and Scott soon had numerous commissions, including the interior of Loughrea cathedral; the Eugene O'Growney (qv) memorial tomb at Maynooth College, commissioned by the Gaelic League; and the Enniskillen Convent of Mercy chapel, which was in Byzantine Revival style, and had stained glass made by An Túr Gloine, the Dublin studio founded by Sarah Purser (qv) and also part of the arts and crafts movement. While working on this chapel in 1906 Scott went on an extended tour to Ravenna and Constantinople to make a study of Byzantine buildings. He was accompanied by the Dublin art critic Robert Elliott, who frequently championed him in the press, and whose book Art and Ireland (1906) was illustrated by Scott.
Scott's designs were simple, sparing of decoration, boldly executed, and often had a heavy monumental quality. The robust towered town hall he designed for Cavan (1901–10) was judged by contemporaries a modern adaptation of the Norman style, but has more recently been termed ‘partly Scottish, partly Ulster vernacular’ (Williams, 46). Most monumental of all his designs was St Mary's College, Galway (1910–19), a diocesan seminary in a style dubbed ‘catholic triumphalism’ by Jeremy Williams. Scott was frequently employed by the catholic church and was involved in fittings and furnishings as well as architectural design. The crucifixes, sanctuary lamps, and altar plates he designed for the Honan hostel chapel in Cork (1915–16) were based on Celtic ornaments. The shrine of St Kieran's well near Kells takes the form of an open-fronted early Christian Irish oratory.
On a smaller scale, and in keeping with the democratic ideals of the arts and crafts movement, was the model village he designed at Talbot's Inch, Kilkenny, for the woollen mill workers. Grouped round three sides of a rectangular green, the houses had a Tudor appearance with decorative panels of hand-baked brick.
Scott was made professor of architecture at the NUI in 1911 and president of the AAI (1913–14). He was regarded as probably the best architect in the country, but he was a heavy drinker, difficult to work with, and he designed as the mood took him. Edward Martyn complained ‘Scott never does anything – but then there's nobody else’ (quoted in Saddlemyer, 170). Despite this reputation, his feeling for early Irish architecture and his contacts with Celtic revivalists made him a natural choice to restore the medieval tower Thoor Ballylee for W. B. Yeats (qv). Poet and architect were joined in their wish to maintain simplicity, avoid manufactured objects, and use local materials and craftsmen, and they worked well together, although Lily Yeats (qv) reported that things would be quicker if the architect were more often sober. He was, however, interested in the project and worked solidly on it for two years (1917–19) with the builder Rafferty, inserting a wooden ceiling, canopied fireplace, and wooden beds, tables, and chairs for the tower, as well as overseeing the thatching of the roofs of the adjacent cottages. Yeats coined a famous description of Scott as ‘the drunken man of genius’ (Hanley & Miller, 16) and wrote elsewhere that he was ‘perhaps the finest imagination working at architecture but . . . very difficult’ (Saddlemyer, 170). He enshrined their collaboration in lines he wrote for an inscribed stone to be set up by the front door:
I, the poet, William Yeats / With common sedge and broken slates And smithy work from the Gort forge / Restored this tower for my wife George And on my heirs I lay a curse / If they should alter for the worse, From fashion or an empty mind / What Raftery [sic] built and Scott designed.
However, this inscription – which underwent several versions before publication, and finally omitted the builder's and architect's names – was never carved on the tablet. Also left unexecuted were designs for a wrought-iron candelabrum and a great oak table, because, before he could finish Thoor Ballylee, Scott died 23 April 1921 of pneumonia at his home in Blackrock, Dublin, after catching cold at the funeral of Archbishop William Walsh (qv). He was buried in Glasnevin cemetery. Exactly three years earlier he had read his own obituary when he was confused in the Dublin press with an English architect of the same name who had died in Cannes. The mistake was repeated by The Times and the Builder and perpetuated in Who Was Who. Scott married (1900) Catherine, daughter of Patrick Crumley, MP, DL, of Enniskillen; they had no children. His recreations in Who's Who were listed as fishing, yachting, motoring, and nature study.
Scott was at the height of his powers when he died and was widely admired; his reputation was afterwards in decline for a half century, but interest in him has revived since the 1970s and he is regarded as among the most significant and influential Irish architects of the twentieth century. As well as giving architectural expression to the Celtic revival, he was also a forerunner of modern architecture in Ireland and has been termed both ‘proto-modernist’ (Larmour, 35) and ‘postmodern’ (Williams, 46).