Seminary’s £7.5m makeover to start

THE MAN behind plans to renovate a former Catholic seminary in the west of Scotland has pledged to preserve the building’s spiritual heritage.

Angus Farquhar of arts organisation NVA is at the head of a £7.5 million project to turn the former St Peter’s Seminary at Kilmahew Glen near Cardross, Argyll, into an innovative arts centre that will combine a 600-seat auditorium with facilities for emerging artists to develop work in a supported environment.

Mr Farquhar said that it was his aim to keep St Peter’s, located on a site of almost 150 acres, as a “teaching landscape” that represented a millennium-old tradition of reading landscapes in a spiritual way.

Work on the project will begin in a few days, with funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund, Historic Scotland and Creative Scotland. The aim is to complete work in 2016 and to open in time to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the seminary, which is regarded as a major example of modernist architecture in Scotland.