Local News | July 2018
ST PETER'S RESCUE BID FAILS
A light show was staged in 2016
Seminary will remain a ruin
An arts company leading a £10m bid to salvage St Peter’s Seminary near Cardross has folded after it failed to secure funding. The arts company NVA had been at the forefront of plans to rescue the modernist building. But it now has announced it is to close, partly because it failed to find the money needed for St Peter’s full restoration. The seminary, which became derelict after it was abandoned in 1980, is regarded as a modernist masterpiece.
NVA, a critically acclaimed arts company that specialised in open air light, sound and kinetic productions launched a bid to rescue the building after staging its Hinterland show at St Peter’s in 2016. The light and sound show launched the Scottish government's festival of architecture. The event sold out and audiences came from across the UK and Europe.
It was built in 1966 as a training centre for priests to a design by the architects Gillespie, Kidd and Coia, but was never entirely watertight. Since it closed down, its arches and walls have become covered in graffiti and battered by the elements.
NVA were given a £4.2m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund and Creative Scotland in March 2016 to allow key parts of the building to be made weathertight and protected, to ensure it was safe for public performances and activities.
POLISHING
A path network, walled garden and bridges in the surrounding 104-acre estate – were also to be restored. However NVA said in a statement: “Despite our best efforts we were unable to guarantee the viable future for the St Peter's Seminary that we had imagined and hoped for. In the end, we had no choice but to bring the capital project to an end.” It said its efforts to find an alternative plan for the seminary and its own business floundered after Creative Scotland, the arts funding agency, announced in January NVA would not be given core funding.
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