THE world’s most ambitious online Dictionary of Architects has been launched in Scotland. It is the creation of Professor David Walker who, as Chief Inspector of Historic Buildings, has provided Scotland with the most comprehensive list of listed buildings in Europe.

When others might have retired, Walker embarked on an online dictionary which now includes more than 6,300 Victorian and early 20th-century architects and practices and 33,769 historic buildings. It also covers the work of many notable Scottish architects who worked in England and overseas. Scottish architects were prolific in Australia, India and Canada, notably in Montreal and British Columbia.

The dictionary is remarkable because, like Sir Howard Colvin’s groundbreaking Dictionary of English Architects (1660-1840), first published in 1954, it is based not just on secondary sources but on first-hand archival research and, in Walker’s case, face-to-face interviews.

“In the 1960s,” Walker said, “it was still possible to get reminiscences of people who had died 50 or more years earlier.”

The dictionary has much absorbing biographical information. Reginald Fairlie was told “he would never make an architect because he was too lazy”. A colleague recalled: “Very few people ever saw him work. He just breathed inspiration. Churches were born during the night.” Fairlie was looked after by a quickwitted gentleman’s gentleman who ensured he was always impeccably dressed even when he slept outdoors while on walking tours of churches.

George Fairweather voluntarily gave up his job and made himself homeless for a time (living on the Embankment in London) to enable colleagues with families to keep working during a recession; and John Gibb Morton, who got into financial difficulties, pawned his office equipment and emigrated — much to the chagrin of his unwitting fiancée, father and assistant.

Sir John Burnet, the celebrated Glaswegian architect who designed the north range of the British Museum, made a study tour in Germany and Italy in the 1870s, writing long letters which, according to a friend, had “the fresh delight of a debutante about her first ball”.

Francis Lorne Tait is vividly described by a contemporary as a “slim, beautifully dapper man, grey hair (in the 1930s it was black) perfectly groomed, silk shirt and knitted tie, of no age import, speech precise, clear and worldly wise, the eyes penetratingly observant” — though within the office he could be aggressive and sharp-tongued.

The great Rowand Anderson’s career took off when in 1873 the Marquess of Bute heard his paper on the Roslin Chapel (of Da Vinci Code fame) and commissioned him to advise on monastic buildings at Paisley Abbey which he was trying to save from demolition.

David MacGibbon, the coauthor of the copiously illustrated five-volume survey of The Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland, slipped in an additional volume on “the Architecture of the Riviera” while taking his daughter to recuperate in the south of France. Many of the visits to castles and (later) churches with his partner Thomas Ross were weekend work by train and bicycle, setting out on a Friday evening equipped with drawing boards and provisions brought to Waverley Station by their daughters.

To keep their large office employed, the leading architects Peddie & Kinnear embarked on speculative building of very grand houses in Grosvenor Crescent and then in Palmerston Place. Like other Scottish architects, speculation cost them dear. They lost heavily in large hydropathic developments at Dunblane and Craiglockhart, both sold to hoteliers.

Walker’s achievement is the more significant as a similar project for Victorian architects in England lapsed because of the sheer number of buildings and architects to be covered.

Walker does not type, so the entries were made by two assistants working from his longhand drafts. He says: “One great advantage of an online dictionary is that it can be constantly expanded. As people use it, especially the architects’ descendants, we hope to include portraits and photographs.”

His assistant, Abigail Grater, says: “You can search by name or building type. You can bring up churches or cinemas in a particular town, or search for buildings in a particular street.

“If you have an old house plan with the address of the architect but not his name, you can enter that address and often find out which architect had an office there. You can also search for clients, including your own family, by putting in a name or part of a name which helps avoid confusions with Mcs and Macs.”

The database also shows up pupils and assistants working for architects and, thanks to support of the Arts & Humanities Research Council, the entire dictionary is available online free of charge.

www.scottisharchitects.org.uk

Correction

In Archaeology Notebook (June 19) “Mistaken mummies”, an editing error placed the bodies in tomb KV20; as correctly noted lower down, they were found in KV60.