The once-thriving retail village lasted only a few years.
04:30, 27 Apr 2026
The once-thriving shopping destination has been left to the elements(Image: PigDogUrbex)
The heyday of shopping centres is sadly behind us, with fewer and fewer malls remaining across Scotland as more people look to the convenience of online shopping. While there are still popular retail parks dotted around the country that stock everything from clothes to furniture, many more have been lost to time over the years
One of these shopping centres that unfortunately lives on only as a memory is the Five Sisters Freeport Shopping Village in West Lothian, located between Edinburgh and Glasgow near the M8 motorway. The once-thriving shopping destination has long been abandoned and is now considered a ‘ghost town’.
Five Sisters Freeport Shopping Village first opened its doors to the public in September 1996, and was considered to be one of Scotland’s top spots for designer clothes. It also had a Leisureland attraction with an entertainment centre and soft play, with the promise of additional leisure facilities to come.
The 50,000-square feet shopping village was an instant success, and received around one million visitors in its first year thanks to its convenient location and variety of shops. Open seven days a week, Five Sisters Freeport Shopping Village was home to top brands such as Versace, DKNY, and Calvin Klein.
After such a prosperous first year, bosses were keen to extend Five Sisters Freeport Shopping Village and so submitted a planning application to West Lothian Council for an £18 million expansion. This would include upgrades to the leisure centre such as the addition of snow facilities, a children’s winter wonderland, and a golf course.
These plans would sadly never come to fruition as it wouldn’t be long before things took a turn for the worst. It is thought that one of the biggest contributing factors to the downfall of the Five Sisters Freeport Shopping Village was the opening of the nearby Livingston Designer Outlet in 2000.
Almost overnight, many of the shoppers who regularly visited Five Sisters Freeport Shopping Village left to try the new Livingston Designer Outlet and never looked back. By the end of 2001, things were already looking bleak for the once-thriving shopping destination.
The car park of the Freeport Leisure Village photographed in 2006(Image: Richard Webb / Freeport and the Five Sisters)
Freeport Chairman Sean Collidge once stated: “This scheme was 100 per cent let when it opened in 1996 and had four tremendous years. Then retail in Scotland became overpopulated in the central belt.”
With customers abandoning Five Sisters Freeport Shopping Village in droves, businesses unsurprisingly followed suit. Many shops shut their doors and relocated elsewhere, and those that did remain started hosting clearance sales hoping to get rid of their remaining stock.
The shopping village’s fate was sealed in November 2004, when bosses decided to close the centre down afters years of dwindling business. What at first was an instant smash success was reduced to ruin in just a few short years, and it sadly would not be the last shopping centre in Scotland to face such a fate.
The Five Sisters Freeport Shopping Village has been mostly left to rot since its closure, with the site mostly untouched in the years since. However, due to its run-down condition, the site has been used as a filming location for zombie-themed films and television series.
There have been a number of plans proposed to redevelop the site of the Five Sisters Freeport Shopping Village, including various housing developments. Sadly, none of these have come to fruition and the buildings at the site remain empty while the car park is overgrown with foliage.
A spokesperson for West Lothian Council previously stated: “The re-development, or re-use, of Westwood (Freeport), near West Calder, previously operating as a factory outlet centre, is supported by the council. Leisure and tourist uses, specialised employment, starter units (Class 4), or institutional uses appropriate to a rural location will be supported.
“Some element of new or extended building outwith the development envelope on site and/or housing (very low density and a maximum of 30 houses meriting a rural location, all confined to the development envelope) will be considered, where this is shown to be necessary in terms of the financial viability of an appropriate scheme.”
More information can be found on the West Lothian Council website.
Did you visit the Five Sisters Freeport Shopping Village in its heyday? Let us know your memories of the shopping centre in the comments below!