The Bannockburn Centre visitor experience will close for nearly two years from next month, with bosses describing the £3 million upgrade as vital for its future. The National Trust for Scotland (NTS) unveiled the plans earlier this month, aiming to modernise the experience for visitors keen to learn about the 1314 battle.
From 3D to Story-Led Experience
The current centre was created in 2014 as part of a £9.1 million revamp, timed for the 700th anniversary of the battle. It replaced outdated indoor facilities from the 1960s. Now, the 3D interactive offering has been labelled “out-of-date,” and the centre will return to a more story-led approach, reopening for the summer of 2028. The centre also suffered damage from Storm Arwen in January 2025, prompting vital repairs that require a full closure.
Stuart Maxwell, NTS regional director for Edinburgh & East, told the Observer: “It’s taken us two years to get to this point, how we’re going to fund it, the impact on the team here and the impact on the local area. We thought hard about how we try to fix a building where many of the issues are internal and it just became a last resort for us to have to close for this period. If we didn’t do the closure, then it would be a patch work job, where now this is an opportunity to relaunch and gives people an opportunity to see what we’ve done to improve over the time the doors are shut.”
Focus on People and Stories
Maxwell added: “There has been a lot of research done with visitors and they’ve told us they are looking for a more traditional experience, similar to Culloden where you can go to the battlefield and really hear those stories. The plans moving forward are to tell more stories about the people, about the women here, the role of children, instead of just Robert Bruce fighting the English. The 3D experience was more or less out-of-date within a year and I don’t think anyone involved had thought through about how to keep it going.”
Changes include roof repairs, solar panels, new air source heating, general fabric repairs, and replacing the existing visitor experience. It will take six months alone to remove the 3D experience.
Staff Impact and Education Plans
Ten staff are currently employed at the centre, with a consultation process proposing a closure at the end of September. Maxwell said: “We are in consultation with the staff at the moment over potential redundancies. Bannockburn is the Trust’s biggest education site, we educate 5,000 kids here and we’re looking to see how we can maintain that through the closure. There is a waiting list of schools ready to come here. We’re negotiating with the staff about how we keep that going and it might be a case of instead of schools coming here during the closure, we go to them but it’s something we’re definitely keen to maintain.”
He added: “It’s a hellish process and the first priority is to try and relocate staff at other Trust sites. There are ten staff at risk, five permanent and five seasonal whose contracts were due to end in October. For those five core members of staff, we’re looking to keep at least one for the educational side and then we always have internal vacancies at the Trust of around 10-12 positions and we will look to give preference for interview to those at risk of redundancy.”
Tourism and Future Plans
The closure surprised many in the community, as the battlefield is a key part of Stirling’s tourism. Maxwell argued for more joined-up thinking, saying: “One thing we’ve looked at over the years is a partnership with Stirling Castle and the Wallace Monument. People have spoken for years about setting up a joint ticket, but it’s three different organisations, but we’d like that and that the economic development teams at the council share the ambition to get things more aligned. I think it is a little disjointed right now and the sites should form a two-day stay in the city, but at the moment, too many tourists are just passing through Stirling.”
