Alva (Scottish Gaelic: Ailbheach, meaning rocky) is a small town in Clackmannanshire, set in the Central Lowlands of Scotland.

[3] It boasts many features such as a park with an event hall and a newly opened outdoor gym, and is the home of Alva Academy.

The name of this place, the orthography of which has successively passed through the different forms of Alueth, and Alvath or Alveth to that of Alva, is of Gaelic origin, and is supposed to be derived from the term Ailbheach, signifying "rocky."

[4] [5] Alva House was requisitioned by the government during the Second World War and as an act of sanctioned vandalism (although hard to believe) was used for target practice by local artillery battalions.

[6] During the Industrial Revolution, Alva developed as a textile manufacturing centre; the woollen mills, originally water-powered, provided employment for locals and migrants to the area.

Alva has many shops, three Christian places of worship: a small but growing Baptist fellowship, a well established Church of Scotland and St. John Vianney's Roman Catholic Church [1]; a few pubs, a small library and a medical practice.

The McArthur Braes, at the foot of Alva Glen, was once a formal park that has fallen into neglect; it is now being regenerated.

The new Alva Academy has been built at the end of Greenhead, a street on the south-east side of the town.

Bus services run to Stirling and to Alloa (via Tillicoultry), and (less frequently) to St Andrews.