The University of Glasgow’s Chemistry Department building was two-thirds completed between 1936 and 1939, but war halted construction, and the third wing was finally finished in 1954. It is now an A-listed building, and has mostly been completely refurbished inside. The Chemistry Department’s website has lots more info on the building.

Although this is a building in use, quite a few areas are out of bounds to students and most staff – I had permission and a guide for some areas.

The building from the outside:

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In 1892, Glasgow Corporation acquired a rather uninteresting bunch of fields with a disused quarry, to build a park. In 1900, Hugh Reid of the North British Locomotive Company donated a further area of land, along with £12,000 to build the nearby Springburn Public Halls (now also derelict) – a condition of the gift was that the City should construct the Winter Gardens.

The Gardens have now been derelict for about 25 years, and are A-listed.

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When the Archbishop of Glasgow commissioned a new seminary for St. Peter’s College in 1958, the Glasgow design firm of Gillespie, Kidd and Coia were given the brief – the result was a modernist Catholic teaching college built in reinforced concrete with lots of wood and glass. Opening in 1966, the next year it was awarded the prestigious Riba architecture award, but by 1980 it has closed – a victim of the decline in church membership.

The building now stands empty and decaying in the middle of a wood, outside the village of Cardross on the Firth of Clyde. Recently, it had a brief burst of notoriety as the location for a low-budget German porn movie – with the predictable Sun headline of “Porn Again Christians” 😉

The main building was lit on the lower levels by five light wells, looking uncannily like silos.

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