St Peter's Seminary, Cardross

After a fire in 1946 destroyed St Peter’s Seminary in Bearsden, Glasgow, the seminary temporarily relocated its philosophy students to Darleith House and theology students to Kilmahew House in Cardross. Plans for a permanent new building began in 1953 with architects Gillespie, Kidd & Coia, but construction didn’t start until 1961.

The chosen site was the Kilmahew estate, home to a 19th-century baronial mansion built for the Burns family. Architects Isi Metzstein and Andy MacMillan designed a bold modernist complex that wrapped new buildings—a main block, convent, sanctuary, and classrooms—around the old Kilmahew House, integrating it as professorial accommodation. The site also included the ruins of 16th-century Kilmahew Castle and was approached via a historic bridge over Kilmahew Burn.

Completed in 1966, the seminary was celebrated for its radical Brutalist design, heavily influenced by Le Corbusier. However, it faced immediate issues: the number of priesthood candidates was declining, church reforms shifted training into parishes, and the building suffered from structural and maintenance problems. It never reached full capacity and closed in 1980. The Archdiocese moved the college to Newlands in Glasgow, which closed in 1984.

The Cardross site became a drug rehabilitation center in 1983 but was largely unused after 1984 due to ongoing maintenance problems. Kilmahew House was destroyed by fire in 1995, though the remaining modernist buildings were listed as Category A in 1992 and recognized in 2005 by Prospect magazine as Scotland’s greatest post-WWII building.