Abandoned £4m visitor centre on sale for £150,000

The park is designed to blend into its rural surroundings

An abandoned visitor centre in Aberdeenshire, which cost £4m to build in 1997, is on the market for offers over £150,000.

Archaeolink Prehistory Park at Oyne , near Insch, shut down in 2011, after Aberdeenshire Council withdrew funding due to poor visitor numbers.

The council had been investing more than £100,000 per year in the park, which worked out at about £13 per visitor.

The building and surrounding land went on the market in 2015 and was sold in 2023 for an undisclosed price to two local businessmen, but the visitor centre is now up for sale again.

Since its closure in 2011, the derelict site has been the victim of vandalism

Archaeolink Prehistory Park was as an educational tourist attraction which explored Scotland's Prehistoric era.

It invited visitors to "take a walk through history" and included a Mesolithic camp, an Iron Age farm and hill fort - and a Roman marching camp.

It also held an exhibition space, shop, theatre and restaurant.

The park had hoped to attract up to 100,000 visitors each year, however, in 2010, the year before it closed, visitor numbers were only about 10,500.

The park has been purchased by two local businessmen

Prior to its opening in 1997, a protest group raised concerns during a council committee meeting about who would fund the Archaeolink park if it fell into financial difficulties.

Aberdeenshire Council spent as much as £135,000 in annual subsidies to support the park, before withdrawing funding and winding it up in 2011.

After attempts to find a new backer ended in failure, the council agreed to put the site on the market in January 2015.

The whole site, which is about 13 acres, was bought in 2023 by Mike Bisset and Shaun Scott, two businessmen who live close by.

Mr Bisset and Mr Scott have made plans of the potential use of the building

Only the portion of the site which contains the Archaeolink exhibition and visitor centre is on the market.

Mr Bisset and Mr Scott have plans to put several houses on the grounds around the visitor centre.

Mr Bisset said: "We were fed up with having an unutilised building and a hugely overgrown area that had been abandoned.

"There was graffiti and people coming in to the area just to break into the building."

The men said they had bought the site with the intention of tidying it up and getting the building used in a way which would "add to the feel of the village", unlike a large developer who may end up "spoiling the area" with a large commercial project.

Archaeolink Prehistoric Park is situated near the rural village of Oyne

The site is located around one mile from the village of Oyne and lies against the backdrop of Bennachie, a prominent hill range in Aberdeenshire.

The visitor centre was made to blend into its rural surroundings, and has a grass covered roof, which rises like a conical hill.

It was designed by London architects, Cullinan Studio, and received a Scottish Design Awards Commendation for best new building in 1997.

The building is being sold separately from the surrounding land

The building is being listed by Shepherd Chartered Surveyors who describe it as a "unique space" which can be used for "a variety of commercial uses".

Shepherd agent Shona Boyd said the site was unlike anything they had ever listed before.

She said: "There are a lot of options in terms of what's possible."