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Report - - St Peters Seminary, Cardross March 2012 | Other Sites | 28DaysLater.co.uk

Report - St Peters Seminary, Cardross March 2012

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baronvon

28DL Full Member
28DL Full Member
Visited 17/03/2012 with Sofamermaid and her boyfreind (very nice people and good to catch up with you)

This place has been done a fair few times but is on my (long) list of places to do.

It really is in a state of decay !! Hard to see the beauty in it sometimes......

what was really surreal was the fact that there was a rave going on whilst we were there. Only a dozen or so folk left (apparently 200-300 were there in the night) still bizzare mooching around with music belting out :)

Determinedly modernist, brutalist and owing a huge debt to Le Corbusier, the building is often considered one of the most important modernist buildings in Scotland. "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", wrote Jonathan Glancey.Filmmaker Murray Grigor made a documentary about the building entitled Space and Light, while Glasgow artist Toby Paterson has painted it.

By the time it was completed in 1966 the number of candidates entering the seminary had decreased. As a result, the building never reached its full capacity of 100 students. From the outset, the building was riddled with problems, including maintenance difficulties with such a unique structure and significant water ingress; the architects and owners each blamed the other for these problems.

In 1980 the building closed as a seminary, subsequently becoming a drug rehabilitation centre. However similar maintenance problems remained and it was finally vacated by the end of the 1980s. In 1995 a fire so badly damaged Kilmahew House that it had to be demolished. The building was Category A listed by Historic Scotland in 1992,and in October 2005 was named as Scotland's greatest post-WW2 building by the architecture magazine Prospect.

Nonetheless, the building remains a ruin. Much of the woodwork is now gone although hints of the original design still remain. According to the architecture writer Frank Arneil Walker, "nothing prepares one for the sight of the new grown prematurely old." 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.

They`re doing a great job
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Speakers and stuff :)
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Loved this

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still going for it
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Cheers
 
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