Skinflats is a small village in the
Falkirk council area of
Scotland. It is located north-west of
Grangemouth
Grangemouth ( sco, Grangemooth; gd, Inbhir Ghrainnse, ) is a town in the Falkirk council area, Scotland. Historically part of the county of Stirlingshire, the town lies in the Forth Valley, on the banks of the Firth of Forth, east of Falkirk ...
, east of
Carronshore and north-east of
Falkirk
Falkirk ( gd, An Eaglais Bhreac, sco, Fawkirk) is a large town in the Central Lowlands of Scotland, historically within the county of Stirlingshire. It lies in the Forth Valley, northwest of Edinburgh and northeast of Glasgow.
Falkirk had a ...
. It lies on the
A905 road between
Glensburgh and
Airth, near to the
River Carron and the point where it flows into the
Firth of Forth
The Firth of Forth () is the estuary, or firth, of several Scottish rivers including the River Forth. It meets the North Sea with Fife on the north coast and Lothian on the south.
Name
''Firth'' is a cognate of ''fjord'', a Norse word meani ...
.
The
United Kingdom 2001 census reported the population as 347, almost unchanged since 1991.
The name of the village is sometimes claimed to be of
Dutch origin, supposedly bestowed by Dutch engineers working on land reclamation in the 17th century, but there is no evidence that any such reclamation projects took place in the parish of Bothkennar where Skinflats is located and the place-name is readily explained as Scots in origin, meaning "short flat".
Skinflats was originally a
pit village, but no mining has taken place there for many years.
There is an
RSPB
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) is a Charitable_organization#United_Kingdom, charitable organisation registered in Charity Commission for England and Wales, England and Wales and in Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator, ...
Nature Reserve at Skinflats which protects saline lagoons and
saltmarsh, both types of habitat being increasingly rare in the Forth Estuary. A project was established to increase the extent of these habitats at Skinflats and following years of discussion planning for the project started in 2018 and on Wednesday 3 October 2018 the seawall at the reserve was breached and the project to realign the coast at Skinflats was completed.
In 2018 the first recorded successful breeding of
pied avocets in Scotland occurred at Skinflats.
The bus service F23 used to connect Skinflats with Falkirk and Stenhousemuir but the local authority deemed it too costly and proposed the cancellation of the service in April 2019.
See also
*
List of places in Falkirk council area
References
External links
Canmore - Howkerse, Skinflats site record
Villages in Falkirk (council area)
Mining communities in Scotland
{{Falkirk-geo-stub