27 - Yorkshire Wolds : Description

Physical and functional links to other National Character Areas

The headwaters of the River Hull rise in the Wolds and flow east into the Holderness plain. Streams arising on the northern side of the Wolds, such as Settrington Beck, drain into the Vale of Pickering, and rivers arising on the west drain into the Vale of York. The Humber Estuary National Character Area (NCA) – one of Britain’s largest estuaries, draining one-fifth of the land mass of England – lies to the south of this NCA, and the streams that arise in the Wolds eventually drain into the sea through the Humber. Along the elevated chalk ridge, strong visual links with adjacent NCAs create expansive views over Holderness, the Vale of Pickering and the Vale of York.

The coastline extends into the North Sea at Flamborough Head, one of the world’s most important fishing grounds, and contains frontal systems that attract fish, birds and cetaceans. The Flamborough Front provides an important marine feeding ground supporting large colonies of seabirds of national and international importance, while the cliffs of Flamborough and Bempton provide their habitats.

The Yorkshire Wolds today

The Yorkshire Wolds is a deeply rural, predominantly chalk landscape rising in a prominent escarpment from the Vale of York to the west and the Vale of Pickering to the north. From high points above the scarp, the landscape of rolling hills falls away gently to the east, eventually merging into the lower-lying, flatter landscape of Holderness. Along the western fringes of the chalk outcrop, two separate areas of Jurassic and Triassic deposits create a series of foothills to the Wolds. The Chalk creates a range of features which give unity to the whole of the area, including the main escarpment, dry valleys and soil that is thin, dry and white when exposed by ploughing. Unimproved chalk grassland would once have been widespread but is now confined to a few locations on the steepest slopes of the dry valleys.

At its eastern extremity, the Chalk reaches the North Sea in the Upper Cretaceous chalk cliffs of Flamborough Head. Designated a geological SSSI, the area comprises the highest chalk cliffs in Britain due to the hardness of the chalk. It is also designated a Heritage Coast accessible via a coastal path, providing tourism and recreation opportunities; an SAC for chalk reef and sea caves; and an SPA for large numbers of breeding seabirds, including kittiwakes and auks, as well as the only mainland breeding colony of gannets in the United Kingdom. The seabirds feed and raft in the waters around the cliffs, outside the SPA, as well as feeding more distantly in the North Sea. The intertidal chalk platforms are also used as roosting sites, particularly at low water and notably by juvenile kittiwakes. Remnant areas of cliff-top grassland are found here and, while agriculture is the main coastal land use, semi-natural, coastal grassland habitats buffer the cliff edge.

The unifying influence of the Chalk gives the whole of the Wolds a particularly strong identity. High on the Wolds plateau, the landscape is large-scale and generally open with big skies being a notable feature. Fields are gently rolling with generally well-maintained but insubstantial hedgerows. Tree and woodland cover is limited, which adds to the sense of openness. The chalk escarpment facing west to the Vale of York and north to the Vale of Pickering is broad and sinuous. In some places, it is intensively farmed but elsewhere woodlands create variety, especially where valleys cut into the scarp. Where the escarpment turns to run due south, it is particularly complex and well-wooded with a strong sense of enclosure.

The Wolds plateau is dissected by numerous deeply incised valleys, which provide a sense of intimacy in contrast to the openness provided high on the plateau. Unimproved chalk grasslands, characteristic of the Wolds, occur on the steep side slopes of the dry valleys, and were once more widespread. Twenty sites are designated as SSSIs, and these are located above Pocklington, around Thixendale and in the north-eastern area at Fordon. They support a mosaic of calcium-loving plant species such as salad burnet, wild thyme and field scabious, and butterflies and moths such as the grayling and cistus forester. There are also many designated Local Wildlife Sites (LWS) throughout the NCA.

Woodland cover is limited with scattered shelterbelts, often providing shelter to the large farmsteads on the plateau, and dale-head plantations. A small number of calcareous ash woodlands are of nature conservation importance, such as Millington Wood which supports rich ancient woodland flora, and clusters of woodland with veteran trees largely occurring on estates and parklands.

The Wolds are home to Britain’s most northerly chalk streams, including the headwaters of the River Hull (SSSI) which flows around Driffield into the Holderness plain. These streams and spring-fed flushes occur in several valleys and along the western escarpment. Abstraction of groundwater from the underlying chalk aquifer has the potential to cause diminished flows in a number of streams. The clear waters of the chalk rivers are a significant nature conservation feature supporting characteristic plant communities, a diversity of invertebrates and the white-clawed crayfish.

The thin, chalky soils, good grazing and light tree cover made the Wolds an attractive area for Neolithic settlers, evidenced by the remains of burial mounds, and defensive and boundary structures. Today, extensive tracts of arable land dominate the landscape, especially on the plateau and gentle slopes of the High Wolds. Field sizes are often large, bounded by well-trimmed hedgerows. A number of declining farmland bird species and a range of rare arable flora occur within the farmland. Overall, agricultural Grades 2 and 3 soils are predominant, and this is reflected in the arable farming which covers 73 per cent of the farmed area. The main crops grown are cereals and oil seeds, with limited livestock rearing but large numbers of pig units.

Generally, the NCA is sparsely populated with villages nestled in valleys or hollows. Traditional buildings in long-established villages are constructed of brick and pantiled roof buildings. Limestone is sometimes used in the west and chalk appears in older buildings, notably near Flamborough Head, Flixton and Muston. The villages in the narrow belt of the Jurassic foothills are predominantly built of limestone, with red brick detailing and red pantiles.

In this remote landscape, the Yorkshire Wolds Way National Trail, a long distance route from Hull to Filey Brigg, provides an important recreation opportunity. Long and short walks can be enjoyed throughout the NCA and two national cycle routes pass through: the Way of the Roses, running coast to coast from Morecambe Bay to Bridlington Bay and a circular route known as the Yorkshire Wolds Cycle Route running from Beverley to Market Weighton.

The big skies and a sense of openness high on the Wolds, enhanced by the absence of people and the dark night skies, give a sense of escapism and tranquillity. Where the plateau dips eastwards, long views can be seen over Holderness, while from the scarp slope on the west there are long views out over the Humberhead Levels and Vale of York. The scale and openness of the Wolds has been captured in recent times by renowned artist David Hockney in his popular large-scale landscape paintings such as ‘Bigger Trees Near Water’.

The landscape through time

The portion of the Chalk Group remaining in the Yorkshire Wolds represents strata deposited during the Upper Cretaceous between approximately 100 million and 80 million years ago. Older rocks – Triassic and Jurassic in age – underlie the Chalk Group and crop out to the north and east. Exploitation of the Chalk Group for lime, cement, building stone, brick and aggregate has created inland exposures where these rocks are visible. Several of these exposures have been designated as SSSI because of their importance to the earth sciences. The most extensive and comprehensive exposures are, however, the cliffs of Flamborough Head SSSI.

Along the western edge of the NCA, the contrasting outcrop of mudstones, sandstones and limestones produce low escarpments and hills. Pleistocene coversands, which are present in the south, produce light, sandy soils, while tills resting on chalk in the Flamborough area give rise to the bevelled cliff tops. At Market Weighton in the neighbouring Holderness NCA, an important geological structure caused most of the Jurassic sequence of rocks to thin out, leaving only the lowermost (Lias Group) beds. They reappear approximately 10 km to the north. North of Market Weighton, these underlying rocks are folded, creating a complex area of foothills, while further south is a clear escarpment.

The thin, chalk soils, good grazing and light tree cover of the Wolds, combined with the availability of stone suitable for making tools, made this an attractive area for early Neolithic settlers. There is evidence of widespread settlement at that time in the remains of burial mounds, as well as defensive and boundary structures.

The Wolds have rich evidence of prehistoric occupation and land use with internationally important Neolithic ritual landscapes, numerous bronzeage burial monuments, and iron-age square barrow cemeteries, ladder settlements and earthwork boundaries. There were recurrent periods of settlement in Roman, Saxon, Danish and Norman times. Many of the medieval settlements on the Wolds were deserted or shrunk due to movement of people and changes in land use. Settlements deserted in the Medieval Period survive as earthwork sites such as Hanging Grimston, and many of today’s villages shrunk rather than disappeared altogether, such as Huggate.

The Wolds have been continuously modified since Neolithic times. Until about 1700 AD, much of the area was still unenclosed open fields, predominantly sheepwalks and pastures. Daniel Defoe at this time likened the landscape to the more southerly chalk landscape of the Downs around Salisbury. There were few, if any, hedges or walls and virtually no settlement, at least on the hills and plateau.

Parliamentary enclosure of these open-field landscapes came rather later to the Wolds than to the adjacent vale landscapes of Holderness and the Vale of York. When enclosure came, it brought many of the features of today’s landscape; hedges were planted to enclose large, regular fields; new large, brick-built farmsteads appeared scattered across the open farmland and well away from traditional villages and roads and, because of their exposed position, they were often surrounded by distinctive shelterbelts. New straight, wide drove roads were also built with wide grass verges. All of these features can still be seen today.

In the Wolds, the absence of surface water resulted in the most significant settlements establishing around the fringes and along the spring lines to east and west, especially in the Great Wold Valley. The presence of ponds was at one time essential for the survival of the valley villages and a number of these remain, including dew ponds on the dry plateau. The villages are usually predominantly brick-built, with pantile roofs, although limestone is sometimes used in the west. Chalk also appears in many older buildings, notably near Flamborough Head which is one of the few areas where the chalk is hard enough for building. There are also estate villages, many with prominent churches associated with the parkland and estate landscapes of the country houses, which often include deer parks and estate woodlands developed in the 18th and 19th centuries. Notable examples include Sledmere, South Dalton and Warter.

Outside the villages, in the Parliamentary enclosure period, imposing brick farmsteads are typical features dispersed across the plateau. The villages in the narrow belt of Jurassic foothills are predominantly stone built. The traditional building material here is limestone with red brick detailing and red pantiles. Many of the villages have particular strength of character because of the combination of traditional stone buildings with mature trees and old features such as market crosses, greens and drystone boundary walls. The well-drained, productive, chalk soil has suited arable farming. The most extensive uptakes in agri-environment schemes up to 2003 related to calcareous grassland and regeneration of grassland/semi-natural vegetation. Higher land within the western and northern areas has seen an increase in woodland planting, with several small, scattered woodland blocks being planted on upper slopes between 1999 and 2003. Other recent changes include wind farm developments.