Joseph John Scoles (1798-1863) was born in London, the son of a Catholic joiner. He was educated at Baddesley Green and in 1812 apprenticed for seven years to his relation, the Catholic architect Joseph Ireland. From 1822 to 1826 he travelled in Europe and the Middle East before resuming architectural work.
Catholic Emancipation in 1829 released a torrent of Catholic church building in England but Scoles initially built a couple of Gothic churches for the Church of England. The now Anglo-Catholic St Mary’s, Southtown, Great Yarmouth was built in 1831 in yellow brick in a decidedly non-ecclesiological style. Pevsner rather unfairly describes it as “depressing”. St Peter, Great Yarmouth (now St Spyridon Greek Orthodox Church) was built in whitish brick with a great tower. Pevsner described this building as “large and uncommonly dull”.
Scoles’s first major Catholic work was St Peter’s, Stonyhurst in 1832-5 for the Jesuits and loosely based on the late Perpendicular style of King’s College, Cambridge. It is neither depressing nor dull. It is a good seven bay building under one roof.
His work obviously found favour with the Jesuits and he went on to design three major buildings for them. The first of these was St Ignatius, Preston (1835), an architecturally correct Gothic Revival Church, now, since 2015, the Syro-Malabar Cathedral of St Alphonsa. The second was the splendid St Francis Xavier, Everton, Liverpool (1842-48); by the Second World War it was the largest parish in England with some 13,000 Catholics, The third was the sumptuously decorated Church of the Immaculate Conception, Farm Street, in Mayfair, based on Beauvais Cathedral (but not as soaring), built in Decorated style (1844-49). This is arguably the most beautiful church in Central London. Later Jesuit Gothic Revival churches by Scoles were St Mary, Great Yarmouth (1848-5) and Holy Cross Church, St Helen’s (1860).
Scoles did not only build Gothic churches for the Jesuits but also some neo-Romanesque diocesan churches. St James the Less and St Helen, Colchester was built in cheap brick in 1837. St John the Evangelist, Duncan Terrace, Islington was built more expensively in the same style in red brick with unfinished twin towers in 1841-43. It received the accolade from AWN Pugin of being described “as the most original combination of modern deformity that has been executed for some time past”. The basilican chapel of Prior Park College, Bath was completed after his death by his son Alexander.
JJ Scoles had a successful architectural practice and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) as early as 1835. He brought up four sons and eight daughters and died at his home, Crofton Lodge, Hammersmith in 1863.
His eldest son Ignatius Scoles, with his appropriately Jesuit Christian name, was born in 1834. He was schooled at Stonyhurst and became an architect, elected a Fellow of RIBA in 1856. Four years later he joined the Jesuits, being ordained in 1866. He spent much of the rest of his life in British Guyana where he died in 1896, having built the tower of the Catholic Cathedral there.
His third son Canon Alexander Joseph Cory Scoles (1844-1920) also became an architect, another clerical one. He was born in Hammersmith and educated in Bruges before serving articles initially with his father. After the latter’s death he completed his articles with Samuel Joseph Nicholl before entering into practice.
In 1873 he entered the seminary at Prior Park, Bath to study for the priesthood, being ordained five years later as a priest of the Diocese of Clifton. He served initially in Taunton and then at St Joseph, Bridgwater where he designed the church in his favoured Early English red brick style; a small altar in the north chapel has an elaborately carved reredos in memory of his father. In 1891 he became the first resident priest at The Holy Ghost, Yeovil. He designed the church in Gothic Revival style and it is one of his best designs with its elaborately carved high altar and Lady Chapel altar. He was created a canon of Clifton Cathedral in 1893 by Bishop Clifford shortly before the latter died.
It is claimed that in 1901 Canon Scoles passed through Basingstoke by train and saw the impressive medieval ruins of the Holy Ghost Chapel. He proposed to the Bishop of Portsmouth he should become the resident parish priest and pay for the construction of a new church. This was accepted; the church was duly consecrated in 1903, and two years later Scoles swapped his canonry of Clifton for one of Portsmouth. The impressive church at Basingstoke was built in late 13th-century style and the interior richly decorated by Nathaniel Westlake. Canon Scoles remained there until his death.
He built a considerable number of other churches in the south west and around London, almost all in his standard Early English style – St Joseph, Portishead (1886-7), The Immaculate Conception, Clevedon (1887), The Sacred Heart and St Aldhelm, Sherborne (1894), St Peter-in-Chains, Stroud Green (1894), St Thomas of Canterbury, Woodford Green (1895), The Sacred Heart, Tisbury (1898), The Holy Ghost and St Stephen, Shepherd’s Bush (1903-4) and St Agatha, Dawlish (1907-9) among them.
Working as both a priest and an architect was unusual, albeit Scoles did take a partner, Geoffrey Raymond, in 1903 and the practice was thereafter known as Scoles & Raymond.
Apart from architecture, Canon Scoles was skilled in lace making and embroidery. During the 1914-18 War the Belgian royal family lived near Basingstoke and regularly attended Mass at the Holy Ghost. On one occasion Queen Elisabeth of the Belgians was accompanied by Queen Amélie of Portugal. The Canon instructed his thurifer: “Before you do the congregation go down and incense the two queens.” He had a powerful voice with which he showed his disapproval of late-comers to Mass. Ladies with new hats came in for special attention during the Asperges.
He was criticised by some of fellow Catholic architects, who felt he built cheap and ugly buildings. In 1908 they wrote to The Tablet calling on the church authorities to stop him practising. The nub of the problem seems to have been that he charged low, if any, professional fees for his architectural work.
Canon Scoles was certainly nothing if not outspoken. “I have written sharp to Sandry about the impertinence of joining to our Church the puritanical though parliamentary nickname of RC. I never let it pass for any tradesman to put RC to us as if we were an Italian or Roman branch of the Catholic Church” (one of my own bugbears). When his plans were queried he was stung to reply: “Am I to take it that your surveyor can dictate to an architect as to what style and period of architecture he is to design it? It is about the best bit of effrontery that I have heard of for a long time.” Asperity of tongue and pen did in fact clothe a warm and generous nature.
He died on December 29, 1920 in the Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth, St John’s Wood. Six days later he was buried at his church of The Holy Ghost, Basingstoke, and there he rests, awaiting the Resurrection.
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