Churches, Canal and Countryside, Snaith

History

Churches, Canal and Countryside is the longest of the fifteen Heritage Walks in the Vale of Snaith, which were created and published in 2012 with grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund and LEADER Coast, Wolds and Waterways. Snaith and Cowick Together led the project, East Riding of Yorkshire Council provided the walk mapping, and local people, including children from the local schools, researched the walks. The walks link existing rights of way and minor roads, and each has at least one large heritage information board.

The walk is 8.75 miles, or 7.75 by the short version, and starts at Snaith station car park. It uses a section of the Trans Pennine Trail. The points on its walk card include Mill Lane in West Cowick, named for a windmill demolished in 1928, and the site of one of a number of medieval pottery kilns there; Shearburn Plantation, once part of the estate of the Shearburn family, who built Snaith Hall about 1829; the Balne Croft swing bridge on the Aire and Calder Canal, built to restore a link that the canal had cut between Balne Croft farm and Pollington; the remains of a rail bridge that carried a branch of the Hull to Barnsley line; and buildings left from RAF Snaith, a Second World War bomber base. The walk returns to Snaith along Dorr Lane, an ancient green lane.