5.26mi Spalding Moor Circular Walk

Oct 18, 2025

4 min read

Updated: Oct 23

Holme-on-Spalding-Moor stands near the western side of the East Riding of Yorkshire, where a low-lying landscape of fields, drainage channels and old roads stretches southwards. Our 5.26-mile Spalding Moor Circular Walk follows the original Komoot recording shown at the top of the page.

Walk at a Glance

Distance: 5.26 miles, as recorded on the original Komoot tour.

Route: Circular walk in the Holme-on-Spalding-Moor area of East Yorkshire.

Start and finish: Shown on the original Komoot map directly below the linked walk title.

Setting: A rural landscape of fields, drainage channels and settlements on the edge of the former Spalding Moor. Exact path conditions and a parking point have not been independently confirmed.

Why Is It Called Spalding Moor?

The area did not always look like ordinary farmland. Holme-on-Spalding-Moor Local History Society explains that Spalding Moor was once a wet and marshy landscape south of the village. Before substantial drainage, parts of the moor could be difficult to cross and were affected by flooding along the River Foulness and adjoining low ground.

The local history society also records a story about travellers paying someone familiar with the marshes to guide them across safely. That is a local legend, not a verified event, but it shows the kind of reputation Spalding Moor had before the countryside was extensively drained.

The name Holme itself appears in historical records and medieval estate documents. What is now a relatively open farming landscape has been changed by generations of drainage, land ownership, road building and agriculture.

How Drainage Changed the Land

The local history society describes major drainage work during the late eighteenth century. Channels cut through the fields fed into ditches, which in turn carried water towards the River Foulness and the newly cut Market Weighton Canal. The work made more land suitable for farming and altered the routes people used across the area.

Old maps offer a fascinating way to see the transformation. Thomas Jefferys' map, surveyed before the main drainage works, helps identify the former moorland landscape. The Holme-on-Spalding-Moor Local History Society has reproduced historical map extracts and documents that explain the change.

The enclosure of common land was another part of that transformation. A parish map surveyed by Joseph Dickinson in 1774 and the Holme upon Spalding Moor Inclosure Award of 1777 record the redistribution and boundaries of local holdings. Fields that now appear long established may owe their shapes to these changes.

This is the wider land history rather than an assertion that a particular ditch or boundary on the original Komoot route dates from the enclosure. The recorded GPS line remains the guide to where the walk actually goes.

All Saints Church on the Hill

One of the most distinctive historic buildings in the Holme area is the Church of All Saints. Unlike the flat surrounding country, the church stands on a small rise. The local history society identifies this as a hill of Keuper Marl above the low ground of the Vale of York.

Historic England lists All Saints at Grade I. Its present building includes a thirteenth-century nave and aisles, a fifteenth-century upper tower and clerestory, and an eighteenth-century porch. The church was restored between 1906 and 1911 by the architect Temple Moore.

Inside are older details including a seventeenth-century pulpit and a west gallery dated 1767. They are reminders that this was an established parish church long before the modern village and road layout developed.

All Saints belongs to the wider Holme-on-Spalding-Moor heritage. It should not be treated as a confirmed stop on the 5.26-mile GPS route unless the Komoot map itself supports that.

Holme Hall and the Old Estate

The history of the countryside also includes Holme Hall and its designed landscape. Yorkshire Gardens Trust has researched the estate through medieval records, maps and account books. A deer park existed here in the thirteenth century and had passed to the Constable family by about 1260.

The estate changed hands over centuries and was acquired by the Langdale family in the seventeenth century. The present hall was built in the 1720s, with improvements to the park and gardens planned by the landscape designer Thomas White in 1777.

The Trust's research records a walled kitchen garden, plantations and later pleasure grounds. Some historic park boundaries are still legible in the wider landscape, although much of the former parkland has become arable farmland.

The hall and gardens should not be assumed to be open to walkers or part of the GPS circuit. Their history helps explain a landscape shaped by landowners and farming alongside the more familiar story of marsh drainage.