Skrat Village

This is a village in the municipality of Petrich, located at 16 km southwest of the town of Petrich. It lies in the northern foothills of Belasitsa Mountain, at an altitude of 540 m a.s.l. The few preserved old houses belong to the so-called Ograzhden-Maleshevo type. Two of the houses are designated Cultural Monuments. The village has electricity and water supply, and partial sewerage system. About 1100-1200 people with an average age of 50 years live in Skrat while the number of houses is 370-380.
The primary school of Peyo Yavorov was opened in 1914. At present, it has 80 students, a choir and a dance group; cultural programmes are being organized at various occasions. The Chitalishte of Anton Popov was founded in 1961 and has a male and female folkore singing groups, as well as female and children’s dancing ensembles. According to local people, the village had 12 churches and 1 mosque in the times of the Ottoman Rule. One of the churches is open today. The locality of Karligo hosts the remains of a small Roman settlement. Other remains from the same age and the Ottoman period have been found north of the village – in the localities of Kolibite, Balkovo and Garchenitsa.
Under the name of Iskrat, the village was mentioned in the Ottoman registries from 1570 and 1665. The means of livelihood of local people in the 19th c. were agriculture (wheat, rye, barley, tobacco, cotton, sesame, poppy, vineyards and fruits), silk culture and stock-breeding (sheep, goats). At the end of the 19th century, Skrat had 355 citizens – 150 Bulgarian Christians and 205 Turks. It was liberated in 1912 during the Balkan War and the Turkish population left in 1923. Two years later, Bulgarian refugees settled here from the villages of Gorni Poroi, Dolni Poroi, Matnitsa and Sveta Petka. A 500 years old plane tree grows at the village center. Attractive tourist trails start also there, leading to the waterfalls of Dabitsata and Mangaro. Another marked trail leads to the border peak of Tumba.
Phone code of Skrat: (0)7428; postal code: 2897.