Students' Plan To Buy £6m Dall Estate Castle For Refugees Ends in Failure

Students' Bid To Buy Castle To Give To Refugees Ends in Failure
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A group of Aberdeen students' plan to open a 'Refugee Castle' for asylum seekers ended in tatters after they failed to raise the money needed to buy the estate.

The students, who call themselves the Comrades of the Glen, hoped to use the historical Dall Estate Castle in Perthshire as a home for refugees who wanted to live in Scotland.

They had set themselves a December 28 deadline on crowd-funding site IndieGoGo but only managed to raise little more than £4,000 - less than 0.001% of the £6m required to fund the project.

Among the more extravagant perks, contributions of £5,000 would have opened the door to a family party (catering not included), while a £20,000 donation could have secured a castle wedding with a two-week honeymoon.

The Dall Estate Castle is still available for the handsome price of £6m.

The lavish 38-bedroom castle, which dates back to the 1300s, boasts a tennis court, a golf course, an army assault course, and its own loch, spread across 265 acres of land.

Darroch Bratt, who studies anthropology and archaeology, told the Press and Journal at the time: "Basically, this came about by a total accident. I was looking through some property websites and this one caught my eye.

"So, I started talking about it with a few of my friends and we all agreed that it would be such a horrible waste to see it become another playground for the mega-rich.

"And we just felt that there had to be a better way to use all that land – we thought that housing conditions are generally not the best for refugees wanting to live in Scotland."

He added: "It’s certainly ambitious but we think that it can capture the imagination of the public and that we can make this work. We’re quietly confident."

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