King's College, London; he had not seriously expected to be successful and was surprised and pleased to reach the final shortlist of three. The successful candidate, Ravenscroft Elsey Smith, appointed him to a part-time lectureship and introduced him to Stanley Peach, who specialised in designing power stations. Peach and Reilly entered into a joint practice. According to Reilly, Peach was "a good constructor, but diffident about his own powers of design. The result was that he tried far too hard to dress up his engineering buildings, with their fine roofs and great chimneys, with 'architecture' when they would have been much better left alone." Reilly, on the other hand, was more interested in design than in the mechanics of construction. In 1902, Reilly applied unsuccessfully for the chair of architecture at University College, London. In the same year he entered the open competition for the design of the proposed new Liverpool Cathedral. He detested the Victorian Neo-Gothic style, describing the work of a leading proponent, Alfred Waterhouse, as having the "colours of mud and blood". His proposed design was in the English Neo-Classical style, with a large central dome in the tradition of Wren's St Paul's. The assessors of the competition were G F Bodley, a leading exponent of the Gothic style, and Norman Shaw. Reilly's design was one of eight highly commended entries that failed to gain inclusion in the final shortlist of five; it was the only classical design among them. Giles Gilbert Scott's Gothic design was the eventual winner, but Reilly had made influential contacts in Liverpool, where much of his career came to be centred. Liverpool University In the years before and after the turn of the century, architecture in Britain was dominated by an exclusive set of affluent partnerships. Aspiring architects who could afford to buy an articled pupillage in one of the leading firms had an enormous advantage. In an attempt to offer an alternative route into the profession, the University College of Liverpool, the forerunner of Liverpool University, set up a degree course in architecture in 1894. The first professor was Frederick Moore Simpson, a proponent of the Arts and Crafts style of building, which Reilly regarded as "a partial but insufficient remedy for Victorian failure." In 1904, Reilly was invited to succeed Simpson as Roscoe Professor of Architecture at Liverpool. He held the post for 29 years, retiring in 1933. In 1904