St. Peter's Seminary is a former Roman Catholic seminary near Cardross, Argyll and Bute, Scotland. Designed by the firm of Gillespie, Kidd & Coia, it has been described by the international architecture conservation organisation Docomomo International as a modern "building of world significance".[1] It is one of only 42 post-war buildings in Scotland to be listed at Category A, the highest level of protection for a building of "special architectural or historic interest".[2][3] It has been abandoned since 1987, and is currently in a ruined state. In July 2020, the site was given to the Kilmahew Education Trust Ltd who plan to reinstate the educational elements of the Seminary Complex after conservation and restoration.[4]
Darleith House in Cardross, the seminary's temporary home before being moved to Kilmahew House
Origin
Following a fire in 1946 at St. Peter's Seminary in the Glasgow suburb of Bearsden, a new home was needed for the seminary. Discussions began with Gillespie, Kidd & Coia in 1953, but the plans for a new college in the village of Cardross were not finalised until 1961, when building began. The college had since moved from Bearsden to temporary homes. The seminary's philosophy students were transferred to Darleith House in Cardross and the theology students to Kilmahew House.[5][6]
The plan was for a new building to accommodate all the students at Kilmahew House. It was a baronial mansion at the centre of the Kilmahew estate, a Victorian designed ornamental landscape created by the Burns family in the late 1800s. The mansion, built in 1865–1868, was originally a family home for James Burns and his son John, and later the Allan family, from the early 20th Century until just after the war, when the estate was sold to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Glasgow. Gillespie, Kidd & Coia employees Isi Metzstein and Andy MacMillan developed a radical design in which the old house would become professorial accommodation, and around it would wrap a striking new main block, a convent block, a sanctuary block and a classroom block. The old house thus became one side of a quadrangle, creating a juxtaposition between old and new buildings.
Also on the land are the ruins of Kilmahew Castle, likely to have been built in the 16th century. When approaching St Peter's Seminary from the west you have to cross an old bridge that spans across the small river, Kilmahew Burn.
Determinedly modernist, brutalist and owing a huge debt to Le Corbusier, the seminary is widely considered to be one of the most important examples of modernist architecture in Scotland. Architecture critic Jonathan Glancey wrote:
The architecture of Le Corbusier translated well into Scotland in the 1960s. Although the climate of the south of France and west of Scotland could hardly be more different, Corbu's roughcast concrete style, could, in the right hands, be seen as a natural successor or complement to traditional Scottish tower houses with their rugged forms and tough materials.[7]
History of use
By the time it was completed in 1966, the growth of church congregations had stagnated, the number of candidates entering the priesthood had begun to decline, and the Second Vatican Council reforms moved much of their training into the parishes.[8] As a result, the building never reached its full capacity of around 100 students. From the outset, the building was riddled with problems, including maintenance difficulties with such a unique structure and significant water entry;[8] the architects and owners each blamed the other for these problems.
The seminary closed in February 1980. The Archdiocese of Glasgow moved St Peter's College to Newlands in southern Glasgow. St Peter's College, Newlands, remained until November 1984 when it was closed and transferred its students to Chesters College in Bearsden, Glasgow. The Cardross site became a drug rehabilitation centre in 1983. Due to maintenance problems with the modern buildings, they were not used again after 1984, when the centre confined themselves to Kilmahew House, and vandalism began soon after.
Abandonment
The drug rehabilitation centre closed in 1987. The whole site was abandoned, vandalised on multiple occasions and later surrounded with a higher fence. In 1995, a fire so badly damaged Kilmahew House that it was deemed too unsafe to stand and was demolished. The remaining modern buildings had been Category A listed by Historic Scotland in 1992,[3] and in October 2005 was named Scotland's greatest post-WWII building by the architecture magazine Prospect.[9]
Restoration efforts
St Peter's Seminary from the Air in October 2022Main block, with terraces of rooms, in July 2005View through the seminary from ground level in June 2010Exterior view of the seminary in June 2010
Nonetheless, the building remains a ruin. Most of the woodwork and glass is now gone, although key aspects of the original design are still clearly visible. According to the architecture writer Frank Arneil Walker, "nothing prepares one for the sight of the new grown prematurely old."[10] Attempts to convert and reuse it, or even protect it from further damage, have come to nothing – hampered by the unique design of the building and its remote location. Plans have included building a 28-unit housing development in the building's grounds, and stabilising the structure by stripping it back to its concrete skeleton, possibly fully restoring a small cross-section. This is a source of concern for conservation bodies including the Twentieth Century Society, who have placed it on their Risky Buildings Register, arguing that this would destroy much of the remaining fabric of the building.
Funded by Historic Scotland and the Archdiocese of Glasgow, Avanti Architects were appointed to undertake a Conservation Assessment of the buildings and landscape. In June 2007, it was announced that the building was to be included in the World Monuments Fund's 100 Most Endangered Sites list for 2008.[11] Also in 2007, developer Urban Splash became involved.[12] Urban Splash worked with architect Gareth Hoskins, and in 2009 environmental arts group NVA were awarded a grant by the Scottish Arts Council to develop temporary and permanent artworks as part of the redevelopment of the building and surrounding woodlands.[13] In 2011, Urban Splash pulled out of the project due to viability issues, and the Archdiocese of Glasgow reiterated its view that no commercial scheme will be viable for the site.[14]
NVA, however, continued their involvement with the site, working with local community groups, raising funds and developing plans for the partial restoration of the seminary buildings and interventions in the surrounding landscape. In 2010, NVA presented these plans at the 12th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale. In 2012, the Scottish Government gave £500,000 for the building's regeneration by a Historic Scotland building grant.[15] Also in 2012, NVA began working in partnership with the Universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Strathclyde on the 'Invisible College',[16] a research network which aims to radically reinvent the college's original teaching function for the present day. A 'college without walls', the Invisible College has involved organised events bringing together academics, local residents, architects, artists, and other interested parties on site for debate, discussion, and collaborative investigations in the landscape. There have been public talks about ruins, architecture and landscape in the nearby villages of Cardross and Renton, and in the Lighthouse in Glasgow. The college has also produced an 'audio drift',[17] a sound work layering together environmental recordings and interviews, designed to be listened to on portable MP3 players whilst walking through the landscape, and a guided walk[18] around the Kilmahew estate, in collaboration with the Royal Geographical Society. Local residents from Cardross have begun cultivating food in the ruined walled garden of the former estate, which once supplied food for Kilmahew House and later the seminary. Following on from this, in 2013, the Invisible College organised a series of events exploring the horticultural and food-producing aspects of the site. The Invisible College has been funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
A planning application was submitted in February 2013 by Avanti Architects and ERZ Landscape Architects for the regeneration of the Seminary.[19] Funding was secured from the Heritage Lottery Fund and Creative Scotland. In early 2015, the site was handed over to artist Angus Farquhar, with the intention that part of it would become an arts venue.[20] A major clean-up was completed in 2016 which included the cleaning and de-risking of the buildings, consolidating salvageable vaults and documenting the surviving buildings. NVA presented a sound and light event for the public which was sold out.[21] However, in June 2018, NVA closed down, saying the challenges facing the company were compounded when a core funding bid to Creative Scotland failed.[22]
In 2019, the Roman Catholic Church, owner of the building, said it had been degraded by fire, rain and vandalism and described the building as a "ruin". Ronnie Convery, director of communications of the Archdiocese of Glasgow, said that the building was an "albatross around the neck" of the archdiocese, which had the responsibility to maintain, secure, and insure it, and that they could not sell it, give it away, or demolish it. He added that public funding was the only way forward for the A-listed building. Architecture expert Alan Dunlop said that he "would be happy to tell [the government] how extraordinary it is and how architects from around the world would want to come and see it". The government responded that the future of the building was the responsibility of the archdiocese, but that potential options for its future were under consideration.[22] Many undated images of the ruined building were published illustrating a January 2019 BBC News article.[22]
In July 2020, the site was transferred at no cost to the Kilmahew Education Trust who aimed to "develop a viable vision, with education at its core" for the site.[23]
The building was the subject of the Pleasure Scene Exhibition at Trafalgar Avenue, London, from 11 June to 25 July 2021, with a range of artworks and photography.[24] The building featured in the television series Abandoned Engineering, series 8, episode 8.
Documentary
The 20-minute documentary Space and Light, filmed during the seminary’s heyday, depicts the life of seminarians inside the building. Director Murray Grigor was granted access to all aspects of life inside the building, including classes, study, recreation, meals, and worship, but the focus is the building itself.
Gillespie, Kidd & Coia was a Scottish architectural firm famous for their application of modernism in churches and universities, as well as at St Peter's Seminary in Cardross. Though founded in 1927, they are best known for their work in the post-war period. The firm was wound up in 1987.
Cardross is a large village with a population of 2,194 (2011) in Scotland, on the north side of the Firth of Clyde, situated halfway between Dumbarton and Helensburgh. Cardross is in the historic geographical county of Dunbartonshire but the modern political local authority of Argyll and Bute.
James Salmon (1805-1888) was a Scottish architect, active chiefly in Glasgow and the west of Scotland.
Partickhill is a district of the city of Glasgow. Located to the north of Partick, south of Hyndland and west of Dowanhill, it contains mixed housing stock of tenemental type property and villa style houses, as well as some terraced homes.
NVA was an arts organisation and charity based in Glasgow, Scotland. It was founded in 1992 by Angus Farquhar, a former member of the group Test Dept. The company's name is an acronym of nacionale vitae activa, a Latin term meaning 'the right to influence public affairs'.
DoCoMoMo Key Scottish Monuments is a list of 60 notable post-war buildings in Scotland, compiled in 1993 by the international architectural conservation organisation DoCoMoMo.
Kilmahew Castle is a ruined castle located just north of Cardross, in the council area of Argyll and Bute, Scotland. The castle is close by the ruins of St. Peter's Seminary. Also close by is Kilmahew Burn. Kilmahew is named after its patron saint, Mochta (Mahew).
Donald Alphonsus Campbell (1894–1963) was a Scottish prelate who served as the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow from 1945 to 1963.
James Salmon was a Scottish architect, who practiced mainly in Glasgow. With his partner, John Gaff Gillespie, he developed an attenuated high-rise style for the office buildings of the fin de siecle cities.
Bearsden Academy is a non-denominational, state secondary school in Bearsden, East Dunbartonshire, Scotland.
Andrew MacMillan OBE RSA FRIAS RIBA was a Scottish architect, educator, writer and broadcaster. He served as head of the Mackintosh School of Architecture in Glasgow between 1973 and 1994 and was awarded the Royal Society of Arts gold medal (1975) and the inaugural lifetime achievement award of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland. In 1986 he was Davenport Visiting Professor at Yale University.
Isi Israel Metzstein OBE was a German-born architect who worked at Gillespie, Kidd & Coia and taught at the Glasgow School of Art. He became known for his postwar architectural designs working in the European modernist style of Le Corbusier and the American Frank Lloyd Wright.
Scotus College was a seminary in Bearsden, Glasgow. It was founded in 1985 under the name of Chesters College and in 1993 was reconstituted as Scotus College. It was then the only remaining Roman Catholic seminary in Scotland.
Architecture in modern Scotland encompasses all building in Scotland, between the beginning of the twentieth century and the present day. The most significant architect of the early twentieth century was Charles Rennie Mackintosh, who mixed elements of traditional Scottish architecture with contemporary movements. Estate house design declined in importance in the twentieth century. In the early decades of the century, traditional materials began to give way to cheaper modern ones. After the First World War, Modernism and the office block began to dominate building in the major cities and attempts began to improve the quality of urban housing for the poor, resulted in a massive programme of council house building. The Neo-Gothic style continued in to the twentieth century but the most common forms in this period were plain and massive Neo-Romanesque buildings.
Church architecture in Scotland incorporates all church building within the modern borders of Scotland, from the earliest Christian structures in the sixth century until the present day. The early Christian churches for which there is evidence are basic masonry-built constructions on the west coast and islands. As Christianity spread, local churches tended to remain much simpler than their English counterparts. By the eighth century more sophisticated ashlar block-built buildings began to be constructed. From the eleventh century, there were larger and more ornate Romanesque buildings, as with Dunfermline Abbey and St Magnus Cathedral in Orkney. From the twelfth century the introduction of new monastic orders led to a boom in ecclesiastical building, often using English and Continental forms. From the thirteenth century elements of the European Gothic style began to appear in Scotland, culminating in buildings such as Glasgow Cathedral and the rebuilt Melrose Abbey. Renaissance influences can be seen in a move to a low-massive style that was probably influenced by contacts with Italy and the Netherlands.
St Columba's Church is a Roman Catholic Parish church in Woodside, Glasgow, Scotland. It was completed in 1941 and designed by Gillespie, Kidd & Coia. It is situated on Hopehill Road south west of Garscube Road. From 2005 until 2016 it was served by priests from the Dominican Order. Since 2016 it has been served by the Holy Ghost Fathers. It is a category A listed building.
The Sacred Heart Church is a Catholic parish church in the Bridgeton area of Glasgow, Scotland. The parish boundaries cover Bridgeton and Dalmarnock. It is situated on Old Dalmarnock Road. It is a category A listed building.
Our Lady of Good Counsel Church is a Roman Catholic Parish Church in the Dennistoun area of Glasgow, Scotland. It is situated on Craigpark. It is a category A listed building.
Desmond Williams is a 20th century British architect who specialised in church architecture and was influenced by the Liturgical Movement. He was one of the most important architects of the Catholic Modernist movement in the United Kingdom.
Notre Dame College of Education was a Catholic teacher training college in Glasgow, Scotland. It was opened in 1895 as a women's college by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, admitting male students from 1967 and merging with Craiglockhart College in 1981 to become St Andrew's College of Education. St Andrew's College become the Faculty of Education of the University of Glasgow in 1999.
McVicar, C. and Suau, C. (2008) 'Neglectfulness in the Preservation and Continuity of Late-modern Architecture: the case of St Peter's Seminary by Gillespie, Kidd and Coia', in D. van den Heuvel (ed.) International DOCOMOMO Conference: The Challenge of Change – Dealing with the legacy of the Modern Movement. Amsterdam: IOS Press.
Rodger, J. (ed) (2007) Gillespie , Kidd and Coia: Architecture 1956–1987. Glasgow: RIAS.
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