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Are you still looking for student halls in Aberdeen? Luckily, there are plenty of options to choose from, and you could start by reading my guide to student accommodation in Aberdeen here.
During my first year at university I stayed with Liberty Living in Linksfield Road. If you are thinking about staying there, want to know what it´s like or see some pictures, then please read on.
Finding the best student halls in Aberdeen for me was at the very top of my to-do list after I received my unconditional offer. After a lot of humming and hawing, I decided to stay with Liberty Living rather than in Hillhead Student Village.
Find out why Liberty Living Linksfield Road was a better choice below!
For reviews on other student halls in Aberdeen, why not check out my blog posts on King Street Exchange (Unite Students) and the Student Roost University Walk?
Student Halls in Aberdeen
Liberty House Linksfield
A Review
1) Booking process:
As far as I can remember, the booking process online was fairly straightforward.
Before I moved in, I was asked to fill out a questionnaire about myself, so that they could allocate me to a flat with people they thought I would get along well with. For example, they asked me how tidy I am, how often I cook, if I go out a lot, if I get up early, etc…
If they do base flat allocations on those questions, then they did pretty well I´d say, since we got along like a house on fire. Excuse the pun… 😊
But perhaps I was just lucky.
2) Arrival:
Upon my arrival, there were plenty of staff members and student reps on site to help out. After I had “checked in”, one of the student reps showed me to my flat/room and gave me my keys.
The student reps were very nice and a few of them helped me carry up my things from the car to my room.
Parking was available on site and also on Linksfield Road.
3) Site, Flat and Room:
a) Site:
Linksfield Road is a fairly busy street, with Aberdeen Sports Village located right next to Liberty House.
Liberty House Linksfield has 6 blocks with 4 flats each, one per floor. The laundry room is outside in the courtyard and there are 3 washing machines and 3 tumble dryers (yes, that is not a lot and it can be tricky at times to find a free machine).
They have a car park and also a place to lock your bike, however, there is no separate bike shed. In the courtyard, there are 2 small benches to sit on. Liberty House Linksfield, unfortunately, lacks a common room, which makes mixing with people from other flats more difficult.
b) Flat:
At Linksfield you can either be in a 3 or 7 bedroom flat with a shared bathroom, or in a 7 bedroom flat with en-suites.
Unfortunately, the flats themselves aren´t particularly modern or clean. The whole flat (rooms and living room) is carpeted, which you can only hope they clean from time to time. In addition, the furniture in the room is brown and the walls reminded me of a prison cell… Hence why it is great to cover them in pictures, posters or lights (they allow you to use blue tack at least, which is good).
Also, the ovens in the kitchen were very dirty and the floor always looked grimy, no matter how often we cleaned it.
Although it wasn´t the nicest of places, because I got on so well with my flatmates, that wasn´t too important. We still managed to make it feel really cosy by putting up decorations and pictures etc.
c) Room and Bathroom:
I stayed in a flat with 6 other girls, I had an en-suite bathroom and we all shared a kitchen and living room.
The en-suite bathroom is a perfect size for one person, with 2 shelves above the toilet.
I am not exactly sure about the situation in shared bathroom flats. I think there are either two two bathrooms or one bathroom and an extra toilet.
The bedrooms are a decent size and are a little bigger than the Hillhead-alternative (New Carnegie).
Tip: The bedrooms with a double window are slightly larger that the ones with a single one. If you are wanting to stay at Linksfield, you could always try asking for a room with a double window.
The bedroom itself has a ¾ sized bed, a large desk with 3 drawers, shelves above the desk and a large wardrobe. It came with a desk lamp (I bought a better one though) and doesn´t have a bin.
Although the wardrobe was rather large, the clothes rail pointed towards you (see picture), which is a bit inconvenient as it means you can hang up fewer clothes.
There is under-bed storage, however, you need to lift up the mattress to access it, which can be a bit of a pain (but it was like that in all the places I stayed).
Although some storage space was provided, I felt like it wasn´t quite enough for me, so I bought a chest of drawers from IKEA before I arrived. One of my other flatmates ended up doing the same.
d) Kitchen and Living Room
Now, the layout of the flats at Linksfield varies with regards to the kitchen and living room.
In some blocks (e.g. Block 1) the kitchen and living room are one. Therefore, the kitchens are a lot more spacious, they have a breakfast bar plus two sofas and a table to sit at.
In other blocks, (e.g. Block 2) the kitchen and living room are separate. The kitchen is fairly small, it definitely felt crowded when there were more than 3 people in it. Everyone in the flat had two small cupboards and a drawer for their things. We had two large fridge-freezers, so everyone used one shelf in each of those.
The living room had two sofas, a coffee table and a high table with three bar stools.
Personally, I didn´t really like the fact that the kitchen and living room were separate, as this meant you couldn´t sit down and eat your dinner, whilst someone else was making theirs.
Tip: If you are thinking of staying at Linksfield, then, if I were you, I would write to them and ask if you could be in a flat where the kitchen and living room are joined.
4) Events:
As I mentioned previously, there is no common room at Linksfield. That means it was quite hard to meet people from other flats.
Liberty did organise some events downstairs in the courtyard, e.g. a BBQ or hot chocolate in the winter, but as far as I can remember, I never went, and it never looked like they were too popular…
5) Staff:
Overall, the staff was friendly. The maintenance staff usually came quite quickly to fix things. I remember having to call someone on a Saturday night to unblock my sink and they came and fixed it within half an hour of my call. The only problem we did have, was that no one ever came to replace our broken fridge. Luckily, it stopped working near the end of term, so it wasn´t too bad.
One of the best things about halls is, of course, is that you don´t have to be at home to receive a parcel. As there is no reception area at Linksfield, there was an hour in the evening (between 7 and 8 pm I think), where you could go and collect your parcel from the office.
6) Location, location, location:
The location is Linksfield´s main selling point. It is situated perfectly. Linksfield Road is home to Aberdeen Sports Village, and Liberty House is right next to it. I could get from training to my room within two minutes! It´s a 5-10-minute walk from university (15 minutes to the Zoology building) and a 15-minute walk from Morrisons. At the end of the street, there is a Tesco express, which is perfect for buying a few small things in between weekly shops.
It takes about 25 minutes to walk into town from Linksfield Road. As it is just off King Street, there are also loads of busses that you can get, either to go into town (Union Street/Union Square) or out of Aberdeen (direction Newburgh, Peterhead, Ellon, etc.).
All in all, I would recommend staying at Liberty House Linksfield. The location is truly perfect if you want to be close to university and the sports village. It may not be the nicest of places, but you can decorate your room to make it feel more like home, and hopefully, you will get along well with your flatmates, which will make all the difference.
Let me know if you have any other questions regarding staying at Linksfield.
If you want to find out more about different student accommodation options in Aberdeen then check out this post.
