Click Images to Enlarge

Discussions began with Gillespie, Kidd & Coia in 1953 to build a new seminary after the previous building in the Glasgow suburb of Bearsden burned down, but the plans for a new college in the village of Cardross were not finalised until 1961, when building began.

Determinedly modernist, brutalist and owing a huge debt to Le Corbusier, the building is considered one of the most important modernist buildings in Scotland. By the time it was completed in 1966, its function was already out of date. The Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church decided that priests should be trained in communities, rather than remote seminaries.

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. The building is Category A listed by Historic Scotland and, in October 2005, was named as Scotland's greatest post-WWII building by the architecture magazine Prospect. In June 2007 it was announced that the building was to be included in the World Monuments Fund's '100 Most Endangered Sites' list for 2008.