Past Watch Site

St. Peter's College was designed by Scotland's leading postwar architects, Gillespie, Kidd and Coia, and was named Scotland's greatest post-World War II building by the architecture magazine Prospect.

The college was intended to be a seminary for Catholic priests. Influenced by Le Corbusier's monastery of La Tourette in France, St. Peter's College was spacious and filled with light.

However, the timing for a new seminary was poor: the Second Vatican Council had just made sweeping changes in the Roman Catholic Church, including the idea that priests should be trained in communities rather than remote seminaries. At the same time, church attendance was down and fewer young men were entering the priesthood. The seminary was closed in 1980, and the building entirely vacated by the late 1980s, owing to ongoing maintenance problems.

Since then, the building has been subject to vandalism and decay. The Archdiocese of Glasgow has done little to maintain or protect the site, and in 2004 lodged an application to consolidate the buildings as a ruin. Scotland has still not reached a conclusion on the application. In the meantime the site is continuing to deteriorate. The Archdiocese of Glasgow at one point offered to give St. Peter's College to Historic Scotland, to be taken into the agency's statutory care, but this offer was declined. St. Peter's was and is a highly significant Modern building in Scotland, and even in its state of severe decay still has an evocative and powerful visual impact.

UPDATES

• St. Peter’s received a £45,000 grant from the Scottish Arts Council to revitalize the site and surrounding woodlands as an arts center. While there is no guarantee that the site will be saved, this is a positive step.  April 2009

• NVA, a Glasgow-based arts organization, received public funding in 2009 to develop plans for temporary and permanent art installations on the site. In September-October 2010 two planning days were held with the participation of residents of Renton and Cardross. Participants were invited to explore the surrounding Kilmahew Estate in which St. Peter's College is located, using interpretive material developed by NVA. Meanwhile a new film, Space and Light Revisited, combines footage from Space and Light, an award-winning 1972 film on the architecture of St. Peter's College, with current views of the site. December 2010

Last update: 12/2010