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Holme Low is a civil parish in the Cumberland district of Cumbria, England. The parish covers a largely rural area with no significant settlements. It lies west of Carlisle.
It borders the parishes of Holme St Cuthbert and Abbeytown to the south, Silloth-on-Solway to the north-west, and has a short stretch of coastline on the Solway Firth to the west. To the north, it is bordered by an unpopulated area known as Skinburness Marsh, which is common to the parishes of Holme St Cuthbert, Holme Low, and Holme Abbey.
In the early 14th century, a castle was built at Wolsty to defend Holme Cultram Abbey from attacks by Scots, who would frequently raid across the Solway. Not much remains of the castle today; it was already in a ruined state by 1572, and had been entirely demolished by the 18th century.
From 1862 until the Beeching Axe in the 1960s, the Carlisle and Silloth Bay railway line ran through Holme Low. Within the parish itself there was a single station, Blackdyke Halt, which closed with the rest of the line in the 1960s. In 1954, this line was the first in Britain to replace its steam locomotives with diesel ones, so for a short while, Holme Low was one of the only places in the country to see diesel-fuelled trains.
The township or civil parish of Holme Low historically included Silloth within its boundaries. Silloth grew from a minor hamlet into a small town following the construction of new docks there in the 1850s.
The whole ancient parish of Holme Cultram was made a local government district in 1863. Such districts were reconstituted as urban districts under the Local Government Act 1894. Holme Cultram Urban District was abolished in 1934, and at the same time Silloth was removed from Holme Low to become a separate civil parish.
In ecclesiastical terms, a chapel of ease dedicated to St Paul was built in 1845 at Caueswayhead. In 1849, it was given an ecclesiastical parish which covered part, but not all, of the Holme Low township.
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