St Peter s Seminary has unveiled ambitious plans THE new owners of the Kilmahew estate, which includes the abandoned former St Peter’s seminary in Cardross, have unveiled ambitious plans to achieve UNESCO World Heritage status for the site by 2030. Husband and wife team Stuart and Ally Cotton are CEO and chair, respectively, of the Kilmahew Education Trust (KET), which struck a deal with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Glasgow last summer for the transfer of legal ownership of the site. The Covid-19 pandemic has delayed the pair’s progress so far but this week they revealed more detail on their proposals to restore the area to its former glory.
IT was 40 years ago this week that one of Scotland’s most famous writers, AJ Cronin, passed away in a nursing home in Glion near Montreux in Switzerland at the age of 84. For one short period Archibald Joseph Cronin was the highest-earning novelist in the world, outselling even Agatha Christie, and he is credited with encouraging the foundation of the National Health Service. Cronin was born in Cardross, then in Dunbartonshire but now in Argyll and Bute, on July 19, 1896. In a mixed marriage that was unusual for the west of Scotland in those times, his mother was a Presbyterian named Jessie, nee Montgomerie, while his father Patrick was the son of Irish immigrants who ran a glass and china shop in Alexandria in the Vale of Leven over the Carman Hill from Cardross. His grandfather Alexander Montgomerie was a well-known hatter in Dumbarton.