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line to the north can be seen through gaps in the trees in the fields below and what remains of its banks are best preserved there. For a short distance the workings are several metres high as the footpath descends the hill through the ditch and onto the flatter ground below. Down here only a slightly raised straight path and a hedgerow line are clues to former glories.
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Beginning on the fringes of Heydon
Village, the ditch's course quickly descends from the higher ground (120m) to the flatter agricultural landscape below (55m). On the hill the earthworks are lightly wooded and it is at this higher point at which the dyke's course and workings are best viewed. Its
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Fox.C (1923) The archaeology of the
Cambridge region: a topographical study of the Bronze, Early Iron, Roman and Anglo-Saxon Ages, with an introductory note on the Neolithic Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University
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Like the other works to the East, it fell from use within a few hundred years of concept. At a much later date it is assumed that much of its length would have been flattened as part of agriculture reforms.
266:"Bran Ditch: an Anglo-Saxon bank and ditch between Fowlmere and Heydon, including an Anglo-Saxon burial ground, a section of medieval lynchet and an Iron Age enclosure (1410907)"
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dating suggests that work on the dyke(s) made during the 6th and 7th centuries. It would have been used as a defensive structure as well as a means controlling trade along
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The dyke is one of the shorter of several earthworks in south
Cambridgeshire designed to control movement along the ancient Roman roads. The others are
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Most of the ditch has been lost to agriculture over time, but its line its marked throughout by both hedgerow and the route of the
Harcomlow Way and
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The ditch offers shelter to wildlife, in what otherwise would be an open and agricultural landscape. It is best accessed from the south at
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paths. It would have consisted of an earth bank and ditch running for approximately 5 km (~3 miles) north-west from higher land at
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Much of the substance of Bran Ditch has been lost over time and it is the least preserved and least impressive of the five structures.
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enclosure. This whole length of the ditch, and the enclosure, is classified as a
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is a fifth earthwork guarding the ancient
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through what is now the golf course at Heydon Grange, crossing the
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162:road and to Black Peak at the southernmost tip of
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57:"Bran Ditch"
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211:Fleam Dyke
129:Bran Ditch
124:Bran Ditch
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277:1 January
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