page_title: George Meikle Kemp
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: George Meikle Kemp / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Photographer: George Washington Wilson
context_page_description: Wikipedia
  George Meikle Kemp was a self-taught Scottish architect who designed and built the Scott Monument in Edinburgh, Scotland. Trained as a joiner and carpenter, he was said to have had a first-hand knowledge of Gothic architecture which was unrivalled in Scotland.
context_section_description: Despite his death Kemp's masterpiece continued to be built, under the supervision of Kemp's brother-in-law, William Bonnar. The height was increased to 200 feet 6 inches (61.11 metres), adding to the elegance of the Monument. It was completed in the autumn of 1844, with Kemp's 10-year-old son, Thomas, placing the topmost stone. Vast crowds attended the inauguration ceremony in 1846. Since then the Monument has become an icon of Edinburgh and indeed of Scotland, though an early critic was the author Charles Dickens who, in 1847, wrote: "I am sorry to report the Scott Monument a failure. It is like the spire of a Gothic church taken off and stuck in the ground". Similar denigrators were few and the building was, and still is, almost universally admired. 
  The Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen sang the Monument's praises some 30 years after its completion:
  The Scott Monument has been visited from every land; engravings of it are diffused over the wide earth; and as long as it stands in its majestic and imposing beauty, the pilgrims of future centuries, who gaze upon it in silent admiration, will connect the name of its builder with the thought of him who it commemorates.
   
  Now, 35-45,000 people a year visit it; roughly the same figure as have visited it every year since it was inaugurated: over seven million people in total. It has, as The Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen predicted, almost eclipsed the reputation of Sir Walter Scott himself. Few people are thought to visit the Monument now because it is a memorial to the author. The huge majority of visitors do so because it, and its architect, are themselves famous. Kemp is revered in Scotland and within the great Scottish diaspora around the world.
  The Scott Monument is the only confirmed completed building designed by Kemp. The West Parish Church at Maybole in Ayrshire has been shown to be unlikely to be his work, and Millburn Church at Renton in Dunbartonshire (now ruined), which was for several years speculatively said to be Kemp's design, is now believed to have been designed by John Thomas Rochead. Reliably attributed to Kemp was a south wing added to the 1700s New Woodhouselee House in Glencorse, Midlothian in 1843  but the whole house was demolished in 1965. Stables attached to the house, built at around the same time, are tentatively attributed to Kemp. They are still standing, listed Category B, and may, with the Scott Monument, be the only other surviving Kemp building.
caption: The Scott Monument on Princes Street, Edinburgh, photographed by George Washington Wilson
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