Hayden Lorimer, Professor of Cultural Geography in the School of Geographical and Earth Sciences, is presenting a new BBC Radio 4 documentary feature, ‘Against Our Ruin’, writes Sam Pugh.  In the programme he asks poets, thinkers and entropy tourists why it is that we love fragments, ruins and scraps more than finished works.

Professor Lorimer presents the programme from inside one remarkable site of ruin and dissolution: St Peter’s Seminary, located on the Firth of Clyde. Originally, a pioneering Modernist building, St. Peter’s opened its doors to young trainee priests in 1966. Only fourteen years later, it was abandoned, dogged by structural defects and changing priorities in the Catholic Church.

For thirty years, St Peter’s has been a playground for ravers and graffiti artists, a honey-pot site for looters and vandals, and a place of pilgrimage for architecture students travelling from far and wide. Life as a ruin has been far from dull.

After decades of neglect, a major phase of renewal and place-making is now underway. Glasgow-based arts organisaiton, NVA has secured £4.2 million of funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund and Creative Scotland to embark on an ambitious project transforming the ruin and its surrounding woodland estate into an “international performance space and multi-purpose arts and heritage venue”.

Professor Lorimer said: “NVA’s efforts will create a stunning heritage location, and a living landscape fit for the creative arts and environmental arts in Scotland. What emerges will speak of St. Peter’s past and reclaim its lost future.” 

'Against Our Ruin', will be broadcast on Thursday 18 May (11.30am; and available on the iPlayer thereafter).

St Peters Seminary

First published: 12 May 2017

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Against Our Ruin

NVA St Peters Project