Reverend William John Loftie

Scott describes Loftie as the leader of a ‘narrow party’ and it is significant that in 1879 George Gilbert junior omitted ‘narrow’ from the published text. In the two intervening years, what Scott had considered to be a small affair had grown into a huge movement against the restoration methods that he and his generation of architects had employed. Loftie was an early member of ‘The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings’ set up in 1877 in William Morris's workshops. In June 1877, Loftie published an article in Macmillan’s Magazine entitled ‘Thorough Restoration’. Scott stated that he found Loftie ‘irrepressible for no matter how often a statement of his is refuted he re-iterates it just as if no such refutation had been made’. Loftie’s article was an outright attack on Scott and Scott promptly replied with a long article entitles ‘Thorough Anti-Restoration’ in the next Macmillan. Loftie had criticised Scott’s work at St Alban’s on both St Michael’s Church and the Abbey. Scott was so incensed with Loftie’s comments on the Abbey that he persuaded Walter Lawrence, the Rector, and Ridgway Lloyd, the authority on St Alban’s shrine, to write in support of his restoration. Loftie also attacked Scott’s proposals for Canterbury, which he had probably seen in The Archaeological Journal of 1875. He had already criticised them in The Times and, after the failure of the Society’s Tewkesbury attack, brought Scott’s proposals to the attention of William Morris as ripe for condemnation. Scott in Macmillan shows up Loftie’s ignorance about Canterbury and he seemed to have regarded Loftie as a light-weight.