Scott Monument

This guide to the Scott Monument in Edinburgh centers on George Meikle Kemp, a joiner's son with no architectural training who entered the 1836 competition to honor novelist Walter Scott under a borrowed identity: John Morvo, the name of a long-dead master mason who had carved Melrose Abbey and Rosslyn Chapel centuries earlier. Rivals protested loudly once they learned an unknown carpenter had beaten trained architects, forcing a second contest. Kemp then spent six years watching his spire of pale Binny sandstone rise above Princes Street.