Whitemoss Ave East Kilbride Glasgow G74 1NN
Architects: Gillespie Kidd & Coia 1957-1964
Designed by Professors Andy MacMillan and Isi Metzstein.
Grade A listed 1994 RIBA Bronze Medal
Should you so wish – jump the train from Glasgow Central, unless you’re already here/there.
Walk up West Mains Road, alone on a hill standing perfectly still sits St Bride’s, you can’t miss it.
The biggest extant example of Bricktalism, the most Bricktalist building in the world, possibly.
Stallan-Brand design director Paul Stallan commented:
St Bride’s for me is the most important modernist buildings of the period. The church made from Victorian sewer bricks and concrete is both simple and complex. The architecture continues to be a key reference for students of architecture from across the world interested in modernism and the contemporary vernacular in context. Andy and Isi’s work is as important to Scotland as Alvar Aalto’s work is to the Finnish.
The bell tower was removed in 1983 due to extensive damage to the brickwork.
Image: Gillespie Kidd & Coia Archive at the The Glasgow School of Art.
It’s a traditional Scottish stone detail I saw for myself as a boy growing up in the Highlands, on every castle and fortified house, and on the flanks of the tower at Muckrach, ancient seat of the Grants of Rothiemurchus, built in 1598. This was my local castle just a mile from home.
The entrance to St Bride’s, I like to imagine, comes from a friendship that included travel in the Scottish Highlands, admiring the Scottish vernacular close-up, of a fevered conversation about a simple concept – the massive blind box, and how the application of simple, semi-traditional material detailing can make it all the richer.
St Bride’s is simply one of the finest buildings in Scotland.
Chris Boyce design director at CJCT Studios
Get your skates on it’s almost ten o’clock, Saturday Mass is about to start, take a seat.
Many thanks to Fr. Rafal Sobieszuk and the congregation for their warm welcome.
Sadly I was unable to reach these dizzy heights.
Happily the exterior is open and easily accessible, though care should be taken when zig zagging carelessly across West Mains Road.
Historically this is my very first Scot’s post, more to follow, I’m away to the Civic Centre.
Modern Mooch 