Cardross Seminary Film by Murray Grigor, Building news, Frank Spedding, RSAMD, Space and Light Scotland
St Peters Seminary Cardross Film
Space and Light : Portrait by Murray Grigor of St Peter’s Seminary
post updated 14 February 2025
Location: just north of Cardross, near Helensburgh, Scotland, on the north side of the Firth of Clyde, situated halfway between Dumbarton and Helensburgh
Architects: Gillespie Kidd & Coia (GK&C)
Date built: 1958-66/8; closed 1980
Cardross Seminary Film
Space and Light Revisited
As part of the Book Festival and as a trailer for Brian Dillon’s talk, Filmhouse is screening Space and Light Revisited on the seminary of St Peter’s Cardross on 22 Aug 2010 : see the Glasgow Events page.
Space and Light 1972 & Space and Light Revisited 2009 – World Premiere
Films by Murray Grigor A two-screen presentation with a live performance of the film score.
Date: 21 Sep 2009
Venue: RSAMD, Glasgow
Space and Light was a wordless portrait of St Peter’s Seminary, Cardross. With its haunting score the film captured the flow of spaces and play of light in a day in the life of this modernist masterpiece, Space and Light Revisited – supported by a Creative Scotland Award – is a painstaking shot-by-shot recreation of the original film, made earlier this year in the now derelict rubble-strewn husk.
The score will be conducted by Rory Boyle – a protégée of the film’s composer Frank Spedding – and performed by musicians associated with the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.
Space and Light : PDF – 640kb
Cardross Seminary : main page
Scotland’s Shame
photo © Neale Smith
“The months and years go by yet nothing concrete is done to help this building. It is time the Scottish Government step in to arrest the decay”. Adrian Welch
William Alexander Murray Grigor OBE (born 1939) is a Scottish film-maker, writer, artist, exhibition curator and amateur architect who has served as director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival. He has made over 50 films with a focus on arts and architecture.
Grigor was born in 1939 in Inverness, and graduated from St Andrews University. He started his career as a film editor at the BBC which he left in 1967 to become director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival.
In 1968, he married Barbara Grigor, née Sternschein, a teacher of French and German, film maker, exhibition curator, and chairman of the Scottish Sculpture Trust with whom he had two daughters, Sarah, b 1970 and Phoebe, b 1972. Barbara Grigor died in 1994. Grigor married Carol Colburn Grigor née Colburn in 2011.
Murray Grigor worked with Scottish architect Adrian Welch on the RIAS Festival Exhibition 2000. The show was curated by Murray Grigor, and designed by Adrian Welch of Richard Murphy Architects. It took place in the heart of the capital city, at the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland, 15 Rutland Square, Edinburgh.
Scotland’s Creepiest Buildings – St. Peter’s, Cardross on YouTube
Cardross Building article in full
Cardross won the RIBA Architecture Award, 1967
Glasgow School of Art – GSA Building, Renfrew Street, designed by Scottish architect Rennie Mackintosh
Location: Cardross, Strathclyde, southwest Scotland, United Kingdom
Glasgow Building Designs
Contemporary Glasgow Property Designs – recent architectural selection below:
Buchanan Wharf Glasgow Office Development
photo courtesy of Drum Property Group
Allander Leisure Centre Building in Bearsden
Design: Holmes Miller
image courtesy of architects practice
Comments / photos for the St Peters Seminary Cardross Film page welcome