Spitlers Edge is a ridge running along the eastern edge of

Anglezarke Anglezarke is a sparsely populated Civil parishes in England, civil parish in the Borough of Chorley in Lancashire, England. It is an agricultural area used for sheep farming, also site of reservoirs that were built to supply water to Liverpool. T ...

Moor,

Chorley Chorley is a town and the administrative centre of the wider Borough of Chorley in Lancashire, England, north of Wigan, south west of Blackburn, north west of Bolton, south of Preston and north west of Manchester. The town's wealth came pr ...

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly. The non-metropolitan county of Lancashi ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

from Standing Stones Hill to Hordern Stoops. The peak, complete with a cairn at , is the high point of the moorland. Redmonds Edge links Spitlers Edge to

Great Hill Great Hill is a hill in Lancashire, England, on Anglezarke Moor, between the towns of Chorley and Darwen. It is part of the West Pennine Moors and lies approximately 3 miles north of Winter Hill, which is the highest point in the area at 456& ...

and is paved. As of 2017, there are plans to extend the paving along the length of Spitlers Edge - with funding secured from the Lancashire Environmental Fund and

United Utilities United Utilities Group plc (UU), the United Kingdom's largest listed water company, was founded in 1995 as a result of the merger of North West Water and NORWEB. The group manages the regulated water and waste water network in North West Englan ...

. Along the length of the edge is a stone wall of some historical importance - the boundary was built in 1841 as a relief measure to provide respite from the

Hungry Forties The European Potato Failure was a food crisis caused by potato blight that struck Northern and Western Europe in the mid-1840s. The time is also known as the Hungry Forties. While the crisis produced excess mortality and suffering across the aff ...

, and is the parliamentary division boundary between

and

Blackburn Blackburn () is an industrial town and the administrative centre of the Blackburn with Darwen borough in Lancashire, England. The town is north of the West Pennine Moors on the southern edge of the Ribble Valley, east of Preston and north-n ...

. The name is derived from the fact that in

mediaeval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...

times, the

Knights Hospitaller The Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem ( la, Ordo Fratrum Hospitalis Sancti Ioannis Hierosolymitani), commonly known as the Knights Hospitaller (), was a medieval and early modern Catholic Church, Catholic Military ord ...

s of St. John of

Jerusalem Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...

used this route when travelling to their holdings in this district. The ridge provides the peaks that supply the source water to the River Yarrow.

References

{{Borough of Chorley geography Geography of Chorley Hills of the West Pennine Moors Mountains and hills of Lancashire