st Peters shcool-Gainford-spooky
st Peter’s was built as an orphanage for 300 boys by the Catholic church in 1900, and run by the Sisters of Mercy, an Irish order. An Angelus bell, which was rung morning, noon and night, gave Gainford a distinctive sound, and was still in place, I believe, until recently.
I’m sure the Sisters’ intentions were good, but I’ve heard several horror stories of what life was like inside this soul-crushing building. An inmate from the 1930s called it “a hell-hole”, and said of the wider world: "If only they knew what sadness and heart-breaking events happened in there to children."
From 1937, it was home to 120 Basque children who fled the Spanish Civil War – some of them, it is believed, were the offspring of the Basque leaders who were trying to set up a government-in-exile in London. The children had witnessed many horrors, and endured the pain of separation and often loss of their parents, and they left behind a statuette of the Virgin Mary and Child to acknowledge that the building had provided them with a refuge.
After the war St Peter’s became “an approved school for delinquent boys”, which closed in 1984, and then for a while, a nursing home.
But no one has had a good word to say about the building. Janet McCrickard, in her 1986 guide to Gainford, said: “On the whole, it is a charmless example of Victorian planning and has nothing of architectural note.”
(from the Glasgow evening standard)
st Peters shcool-Gainford-spooky
st Peter’s was built as an orphanage for 300 boys by the Catholic church in 1900, and run by the Sisters of Mercy, an Irish order. An Angelus bell, which was rung morning, noon and night, gave Gainford a distinctive sound, and was still in place, I believe, until recently.
I’m sure the Sisters’ intentions were good, but I’ve heard several horror stories of what life was like inside this soul-crushing building. An inmate from the 1930s called it “a hell-hole”, and said of the wider world: "If only they knew what sadness and heart-breaking events happened in there to children."
From 1937, it was home to 120 Basque children who fled the Spanish Civil War – some of them, it is believed, were the offspring of the Basque leaders who were trying to set up a government-in-exile in London. The children had witnessed many horrors, and endured the pain of separation and often loss of their parents, and they left behind a statuette of the Virgin Mary and Child to acknowledge that the building had provided them with a refuge.
After the war St Peter’s became “an approved school for delinquent boys”, which closed in 1984, and then for a while, a nursing home.
But no one has had a good word to say about the building. Janet McCrickard, in her 1986 guide to Gainford, said: “On the whole, it is a charmless example of Victorian planning and has nothing of architectural note.”
(from the Glasgow evening standard)