Cardross
One dreich afternoon in the mid 1960s the Archbishop of Glasgow was having a round of golf with an architect... and he asked the architect to build a new seminary outside Glasgow on the ancient 28 acre country estate of Kilmahew House in Cardross. The architect gave the job to two young turks, Andy MacMillan and Isi Metzstein, and they produced St Peter's Seminary, now widely recognized as Scotland's modernist masterpiece. Following the Vatican II encyclical the Church decided that priests should no longer be trained in the countryside and St Peter's Seminary was abandoned in 1981. Later it was 'A' listed and became Scotland's first 'modernist ruin'.
In 2001, after the publication of these photographs, the Cardross Preservation Trust was formed to explore new uses and begin the search for a new owner. Only a year later a developer tried to get planning permission to all but demolish the building, and to fill the site with houses. The building is still there, just. The demolition was blocked, the Diocese of Glasgow still owns the site and the building, and a new use has yet to be found for it.