Rockvilla Mushroom Factory and School

Right next to the Spier’s Wharf branch of the Forth & Clyde Canal stands this rather ugly building – it’s been a very visible landmark just to the north of Glasgow city centre for as long as I can remember. Rockvilla is, as it sounds, an enormous rock – Possil road tunnels through it and under the canal, and there used to be a school perched on the rock, but all that remains of that is the boy’s and girl’s entrances which spiral up through the rock.

This building was once a bonded warehouse, but later it was used for growing mushrooms – hence the bricked-up lower windows. It’s most interesting for the fantastic views.

Abandoned Warehouse (by Ben Cooper)

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St. Peter’s Seminary

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.

Cardross Seminary 1 (by Ben Cooper)

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