Skinflats is a small village in the

Falkirk council area Falkirk (; sco, Fawkirk; gd, An Eaglais Bhreac) is one of 32 unitary authority council areas of Scotland. It was formed on 1 April 1996 by way of the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994 from the exact boundaries of Falkirk District, one ...

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...

. It is located north-west of Grangemouth, east of

Carronshore Carronshore is a village in the Falkirk council area of Scotland. The village lies in the Forth Valley, north of the town of Falkirk and directly to the east of neighbouring village Carron. The village sits north of the River Carron. Accor ...

and north-east of Falkirk. It lies on the

A905 road List of A roads in zone 9 in Great Britain starting north of the A8, east of the A9 (roads beginning with 9). Single- and double-digit roads Triple-digit roads Four-digit roads See also * B roads in Zone 9 of the Great Britain numberi ...

between

Glensburgh Glensburgh is a very small and old hamlet situated on the south bank of the River Carron, north-west of Grangemouth. Originally built on farmland in 1240 as houses for farm slaves the now standing cottages date back as far as 1878. Originall ...

and

Airth Airth is a Royal Burgh, village, former trading port and civil parish in Falkirk, Scotland. It is north of Falkirk town and sits on the banks of the River Forth. Airth lies on the A905 road between Grangemouth and Stirling and is overlooked by A ...

, near to the River Carron and the point where it flows into the Firth of Forth. The

United Kingdom 2001 census A nationwide census, known as Census 2001, was conducted in the United Kingdom on Sunday, 29 April 2001. This was the 20th UK census and recorded a resident population of 58,789,194. The 2001 UK census was organised by the Office for National ...

reported the population as 347, almost unchanged since 1991. The name of the village is sometimes claimed to be of

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

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 A pit village, colliery village or mining village is a settlement built by colliery owners to house their workers. The villages were built on the coalfields of Great Britain during the Industrial Revolution where new coal mines were developed in ...

, but no mining has taken place there for many years. There is an RSPB Nature Reserve at Skinflats which protects saline lagoons and

saltmarsh A salt marsh or saltmarsh, also known as a coastal salt marsh or a tidal marsh, is a coastal ecosystem in the upper coastal intertidal zone between land and open saltwater or brackish water that is regularly flooded by the tides. It is dominated ...

, 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 avocet The pied avocet (''Recurvirostra avosetta'') is a large black and white wader in the avocet and stilt family, Recurvirostridae. They breed in temperate Europe and across the Palearctic to Central Asia then on to the Russian Far East. It is a ...

s 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.

References

External links

Canmore - Howkerse, Skinflats site record
Villages in Falkirk (council area) Mining communities in Scotland {{Falkirk-geo-stub