On the journey to Woodbridge, we stopped at a place I had wanted to visit for some time: The Devil’s Dyke. There are several places in the British landscape that have been given the name of Devil’s Dyke, the most well known is a valley in the South Downs, near Brighton. The Devil’s Dyke is not a natural feature, it was built by man, and Anglo-Saxon men at that. It runs across the Cambridgeshire countryside from one unimportant place to another. Why was it there?Įveryone has heard of Offa’s Dyke a bank and ditch that separates England and Wales, or at the time that it was supposed to have been built, by King Offa in the eighth century, to keep the Welsh out of Mercia. The Devil’s Dyke was built, probably in the 6th or 7th century, to keep the Mercians out of East Anglia. It was not until the A14 was built that it became easier (although for travellers stuck in hold-ups on that road, that is a debatable point.) East Anglia has always been difficult to reach from the west, even in recent times. To the north the Wash and the Fens reach deep into the land and to the south, there was thick forest. There was only one easy route, a strip of chalk grassland through which ran the Icknield Way. This ancient trackway, perhaps named after the Iceni tribe, ran from Wiltshire to Norfolk. In the nineteenth century a railway, now dismantled, was built that way. And where people travelled, whether traders or armies, control was needed. The Anglo-Saxons built several dykes across the route: Bran Ditch, Brent Ditch, Fleam Dyke and the longest and best preserved Devils Dyke.įor such a large and prominent landmark, it was remarkably difficult to find. We had found maps and walks online and decided to start at the northernmost end, a village called Reach. We would walk along the dyke as far as we had time for and return to our car to continue our journey. The drive to Reach was an adventure in itself. Small winding lanes among fenland drains, with road signs that disappeared at the most inconvenient moment, but eventually we arrived and parked close to the Dykes End pub. Apart from the road signs there were a multitude of walk directions at the entrance to a footpath just behind where this photo was taken. We walked up it (in my experience, the correct route is always up a hill!), round corners, through a few fields, ate a few blackberries.
Where was the dyke? We consulted the compass, compared it with the maps, had a heated argument and ended up back in the village – all without finding anything that resembled a dyke. Had we misread the map? Had we gone in the wrong direction? Look at that picture (above). See that clump of trees at the end of the green? That is the dyke! In fact, once we found the cunningly hidden explanation board, we discovered that the green was originally part of the dyke, flattened. Hoping no one had noticed our mistake, we fought our way through the undergrowth to find ourselves in what we thought was the dyke ditch. Of course, as we were walking south with the bank on our right, we were, in fact, on the defended, East Anglian side of the dyke. It was a warm muggy day and we tramped through the long grass disturbing butterflies and other insects. Eventually we found a steep path up onto the top of the dyke.
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