St Peters Seminary - Cardross

[Scots_Charles_River]

I had lived in the area for nearly twenty years so thought I must check out the grounds and building, which is being pushed for UNESCO World Heritage status.

The building is dilapidated and falling apart, burnt by arsonists, used by junkies and graffitied. But.......is an amazing piece of architecture in a fantastic rural setting with a lost world feel with the huge specimens, feeling like an arboretum. (a la Augusta)

The grounds have beautiful and huge pines and firs. Some amazing specimens.

As for the building, it's in a run down state the grounds are alive with roe deer and squirrels and other wildlife (local dumby junkies) so avoid going there on yer todd. It's very spooky wandering about, feels like someone is watching, maybe there was.

It's well worth the nature trail style walk, a haven, especially just down from the cantilver there is a great wee babbling brook, Kelly Ketle stop when I was there on sunday, in the showers. Two buzzads were frantically looking for voles on the edge of the grounds/golf course.

More here
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/11/06/bapeter106.xml

Nick

 

[Dr Onion]

Wow - I live 5 minutes into Dumbarton and I never knew this was there!!

Need to go check it out - looks interesting!

Thanks for posting this - I take it access is off of Carman?

Cheers

Dr O

 

[Toddy]

Y'know we talk about preservation, restoration and the like, but there's a reason so many modern buildings are left to crumble and are demolished. They might be good "design" but they're damn poor design. This building leaked and ran with condensation from day1. The church authorities tried numerous fixes and in the end decided it wasn't feasible to keep throwing money, that they had a thousand better uses and needs for, at it. Now they are lumbererd with a white elephant and lots of arty opprobium because they aren't taking care of it.
Sometimes it's time to just get it over with.

One of the priests I worked with at a set of children's workshops talked of this building but it was the place that appealed more, he said it was a beautiful site and since it's been left in a kind of mouldering mothballs the wildlife has been slowly reclaiming it. It might be worth finding very early maps of the area and seeing what was there before the major buildings.

I do know of friends who have visited and been very disturbed by the area too though, suicides and the like apparantly there.

Hidden Glasgow has a thread on the building and area
http://www.hiddenglasgow.com/StPeters/index.htm
Risky Buildings
http://www.riskybuildings.org.uk/docs/26stpeters/index.html
http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=3089

cheers
Toddy

 

[Scots_Charles_River]

Toddy,

I appreciate what your sayng but the colleseum, pyramids, forth rail bridge, eiffel tour etc all need repairing.

If we don't preserve it it's lost forever.

Nick

 

[Scots_Charles_River]

Wow - I live 5 minutes into Dumbarton and I never knew this was there!!

Need to go check it out - looks interesting!

Thanks for posting this - I take it access is off of Carman?

Dirve into Cardross from Dumby, turn right at the Carman turnoff, drive up and park up at the glavanised high fence. Walk up the tarmac rd, bearing right thru old arches and over a sweet wee rd bridge.

Nick

 

[Toddy]

Toddy,

I appreciate what your sayng but the colleseum, pyramids, forth rail bridge, eiffel tour etc all need repairing.

If we don't preserve it it's lost forever.

Nick

The building was never fit for it's job. It's not just repairing it needs. It needed re-thinking even as it was being built. Firmly entrenched in the post war Gulag School of architecture, it was and is, a carbunkle.......bit like the new parliament building really

cheers,
Toddy

 

[mr dazzler]

It looks to me like the hayward gallery or the barbican in London, all art brut exposed angular concrete shuttering texture and the like (done at the same time as the south bank when all that functionalist stuff was fashionable). The pope's didnt get much of a return on that project did they Too shabby and too recent to be shrinised (for neo romanist pillgrimms)

 

[w00dsmoke]

The building was never fit for it's job. It's not just repairing it needs. It needed re-thinking even as it was being built. Firmly entrenched in the post war Gulag School of architecture, it was and is, a carbunkle.......bit like the new parliament building really

cheers,
Toddy

hahaha I'm glad it's just not me that thinks that!

 

[sandbender]

Gulag School of architecture

I love the Gulag School of architecture, thats why I moved to Eastern Europe

Many more images of the Seminary here...

http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=3089

 

[Toddy]

I like design, I thoroughly enjoy the way good art and function combine to make something stunning. This has all the appeal of a missile silo. No I lie, it looks like one of those model buildings that were made for Thunderbirds or Stingray

I've worked in ruins over four thousand years old and they have more substance than this pile.....this building is just forty years old and it's fau'inty......

You'd never guess I'm not really a fan.......and I ought to be if it were all it was supposed to be.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Dr Onion]

Dirve into Cardross from Dumby, turn right at the Carman turnoff, drive up and park up at the glavanised high fence. Walk up the tarmac rd, bearing right thru old arches and over a sweet wee rd bridge.

Nick

Nice one! I'll go this weekend I think!

Cheers for that!

Dr O

 

[Scots_Charles_River]

Well at least we are discussing it rather than most houses we live in in suburbia.

The architects practice that designed it have a show at the Scottish Centre for Design and Architecture. - The Lighthouse - Glasgow.

You don't have to go and see the building, no one is forcing you too. If you want to be open minded then visit.

Nick

 

[Dr Onion]

Well, I had a little trip up on Saturday. Probably shouldn't have watched "Silent Hill" the previous night! It was very eerie!

Enjoyed it nonetheless! Pity I never got to see it before all the damage but I at least could get a sense of what it was like.

Thanks for that SCR - an enjoyable Saturday afternoon!

Dr O

 

[Scots_Charles_River]

No worries, glad you enjoyed it, I hope others will visit rather than just read someone elses opinion.

Cheers

Nick

EDIT- The Architects exhibition. http://www.gillespiekiddandcoia.com/

 

[Toddy]

The opinion that it is worth saving is being loudly made, while any other opinion that voices criticism is treated as though incapable of recognising good design.
The former demand huge resources be spent conserving what the latter consider to be an undeserving structure.
One might say it's the old issue of subjective objectivity

None of this in any way stops anyone visiting the site, which by all accounts is a beautiful place, or it could be

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Scots_Charles_River]

None of this in any way stops anyone visiting the site, which by all accounts is a beautiful place, or it could be

cheers,
Toddy

Ah, you have visited it then ?

Nick

 

[Toddy]

A long time ago before it became quite so ruinous, and before the big fire that destroyed the older house.

Actually thinking about it, that might be part of my antipathy to the structure, it seemed a most unhappy *marriage* of buildings; out of place somehow, didn't fit the site.....dunno, just a, no I don't like this. Knowing that the building wasn't sound didn't help either.

I would resent millions of public funds being spent on it though, the situation could be quite beautiful, but I doubt private finance would pay for the redevelopment/ restoration for anything other than expensive housing and they'd use all the available land to try to turn a profit from their expenditure.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[mr dazzler]

Is it my imagination or diid my last post on this thread get censored? If it was (and it wasnt just my computer at fault) could a mod please take the time to explain why I would apreciate that, if I made some inapropiate comment fair enough. But if mod's see fit to cut post's surely its simple good manner and sound policy to explain specifically why it was inapropiate instead of just doing it on the quiet?

 

[Toddy]

Well I didn't censor anything on the thread, I'd have told you if I had, and I can't see anything in the Mods area indicating that anyone else has either.

What did you write?

cheers,
Toddy

 

[mr dazzler]

just a few pithie comments about the banality of modern architecture, stupidity of loonie academic types who still persist in defending 60's architecture such as byker wall and north peckham estate, I used the words socialist concrete jungle holier than thou, that sort of thing. I waqs sure it had psoted up suceessfully but evidently it didnt Oh and I sudgested that they have a raffle in scotland and the winner get's to press the demolition button when they blow that concrete monstrosity away for good