Huntly Development Trust

Huntly Development Trust (HDT) is a nationally-recognised, forward-thinking community organisation rooted right here in Huntly.

We’re passionate about creating opportunities to help our town and the wider district thrive — for everyone who lives and works here now, and in the future.

With support from more than 600 members, a dedicated team of 26 staff (14 full-time equivalent), and the guidance of 8 committed volunteer Trustees, we work with others to tackle local challenges and create real, positive change.

Since 2009, HDT has worked with many partners to deliver a wide variety of projects of increasing scale and complexity, such as:

• Bringing back life to Huntly town centre by redeveloping vacant properties and giving them new purpose:
  • The former RBS building, now home to Orbs Community Bookshop
  • 11 Deveron Street, the base for our Huntly Travel Hub
  • Number 30, our award-winning flagship venue on The Square. This vibrant community space, with its cinema, café, co-working spaces, learning zone & banking hub has become a place where local people come together every day. It provides twenty jobs & several training opportunities.
• Transforming Greenmyres, a former hill farm, into a biodiverse community asset for outdoor adventures (see next section)
• Helping people travel in practical, affordable & environmentally responsible ways. Our Huntly Travel Hub operates the community minibus, a two-car Co-wheels franchise, electric bike hire & promotes walking & cycling.
• Capturing enhanced benefit from local wind energy opportunities, including from two commercial developments, as well as our own community turbine at Greenmyres. This income has levered in ca £5.3 million of external investment towards the above projects – and many others.

Across all this work, our focus remains the same: thinking ahead, taking practical action and working with partners to create lasting benefits for Huntly and District.

Greenmyres

In March 2014, Huntly Development Trust acquired Greenmyres, a 63-acre (25 hectare) hill farm some 5 miles South East of Huntly.

Since then, we’ve:

• Installed the Greenmyres wind turbine generating green electricity and revenue for community investment
• Turned the deteriorating farmhouse into the Ecobothy, an award-winning fully-accessible, eco-friendly meeting venue, with ancillary storage/workshop, car parking and a dog park
• Completed the missing links in a foot/cycle path to Huntly, and built a link path into Gartly Forest connecting Greenmyres with its network of forest roads
• Constructed a cycle pump track, changing rooms and an extended lochan to host a variety of introductory-level outdoor activity
• Increased site biodiversity by digging two wildlife scrapes, and planting wildflowers, hedges and ca 7,000 native trees.

Greenmyres is now a biodiverse, family-friendly adventure centre where young and old can enjoy the great outdoors and learn new skills. The site has become increasingly popular with uniformed groups from across the North East and enables us to deliver activities for local school pupils, some with additional support needs.

Acquisition of Wind’s Eye would allow us to deliver more benefit from and at Greenmyres.