Cardross Seminary, Scottish Modern Building, Development, Image, Book, News, Scotland
St Peter’s Seminary Cardross : GK&C Building
Cardross Seminary Building – design by Gillespie Kidd & Coia Architects, Glasgow
10 Dec 2016
St Peter’s Seminary Book
New Book about Cardross Seminary
St Peter’s, Cardross

Birth, Death and Renewal
Diane M Watters, with photo essay by Angus Farquhar
RRP £30
The ruin of St Peter?s College has sat on a hilltop above the village of Cardross for more than three decades. Over that time, with altars crumbling, graffiti snaking across its walls and nature reclaiming its concrete, it has gained a mythical, cult-like status among architects, preservationists and artists.
St Peter?s only fulfilled its original role as a seminary for fourteen years, from 1966 to 1979. As its uncompromising design gave way to prolonged construction and problematic upkeep, the Catholic Church reassessed the role of seminaries, resolving to embed trainee priests not in seclusion, but in communities. Although briefly repurposed as a drug rehabilitation centre, the building was soon abandoned to decay and vandalism.
Ever since, people have argued and puzzled over the future and importance of St Peter?s. It has been called both Scotland?s best and worst twentieth century building, and was category A listed in 1992. One of its architects suggested the idea of ?everything being stripped away except the concrete itself ? a purely romantic conceptio...