Industrial Heritage, Rawcliffe

History

Industrial Heritage is one of 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, and the only one that starts at Sugar Mill Ponds Nature Reserve. 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 starts at Sugar Mill Ponds, Rawcliffe Bridge, a ten-hectare nature reserve with two large ponds, and runs 5.25 miles (4.25 by the shorter route) through Rawcliffe and Rawcliffe Bridge. Its walk card points out the River Don, said to have been diverted this way in 1635 by the Dutchman Cornelius Vermuyden and so called the Dutch River; the Victorian school of 1877 and Wesleyan chapel of 1906 on Bridge Lane; the works where the Croda company was born in 1925; a site with a link to paper-making going back to 1889; the 8.5-mile stretch of the M62 that opened in September 1975; and the local railway, officially opened on 29 March 1848. Heritage boards at Sugar Mill Ponds cover the nature reserve, Croda and the railway.