Thanks for this. JRR Tolkien was also fascinated by these. They pop up several times in LOTR. For instance: ‘The dark line they had seen was not a line of trees but a line of bushes growing on the edge of a deep dike (ditch) with a steep wall (earthwork )on the further side. Tom (Bombadil) said that it had once been the boundary of a kingdom, but a very long time ago.’
Thanks for delving (sorry) into these features, Paul. I’m always struck by the vast resources consumed in the making of earthworks: the innumerable hours of labour, the production & maintenance of the tools, the incredible number of calories the people had to consume to do this work. These ditches were clearly important to them. And, I appreciate that you include Dr Morrison in your video on top of your reading and research about the subject. I recall you stating firmly that you are neither archeologist nor scientist, but you do follow the forms, and I think you contribute thereby to the wider knowledge base
Huge amounts of labor also went into earthworks in the americas over thousands of years. My theory is that before the internet and TV, we got a lot done. ;-)
@@davidmcnaughty4889have you seen the prehistoric hunting walls used to drive herds of wild animals up against? Seems like you could drive the animals up the valleys and then have them trapped against the grims ditch to despatch and collect
A very interesting history lesson. I liked the archaeologist's statement that when people try to tell you something about prehistory as fact, they are probably trying to sell you something. Thank you for your time in making these videos.
Thank you for another "boots on the ground" exploration! Very interesting as we try to figure out why a prehistoric society invested such effort into earthworks.
@@a.karley4672 Well, I suppose I was imprecise. I meant "society" in a very general way, as the people living there with some continuity assumed, that committed themsevles at some point to this large organized construction.
@ There is an error of logic - warned about in Statistics classes and other subjects - called "reification", which is "making a thing out of an apparent grouping". For example, you have a bunch of numbers, and they show a particular, good, correlation between (say) IQ and big-toe-nail-thickness) and because the correlation is real and statistically reproducible, you infer that there is some "thing" relating big-toe-nail-thickness and "intelligence". That may be true. But not necessarily. Here we have a group of landscape features which share some characteristics (linearity, near-but-not-at the top of slopes, only 1000 age span between the members *which can be dated* ). But are they a *real* grouping? Or are they a grouping of structures that we think are related, but were really created for 5 different reasons, by 4 different groups in 3 different age periods. At this moment in time, we just don't have the data to say if they're a real grouping, or several causally unrelated sets of artefacts. It's a fine point. But it's important. "More data!"
Something I notice, all of them are at the start of a waterway, it appears to me, it could be a structure that ensures water, by building a mound, you increase slope, so surface water flows, plus it absorbs water, which over time releases it slowly. Now I could be way off, but working with environment (Australian bush regeneration), I saw this kind of effect naturally, the soil holds water and also prevents excess water being evaporated, also acting as a filter, so giving clean water
Thanks Paul, great video, you referred to it as a monument a few times but then reverted to structure which is much better, I like artifact which is what it is. Dr Wendy rather stole the show and was superb. Many thanks for a very well made and thoughtful vid.
She added to the show which was based on work done and organized by Paul. No Wendy here wo Paul, but yes, great info, and wats too consider the WHY? from all😀
I remember back in the 1990s being part of a project looking at Offas Dyke and we took the opertunity to look at a number of very similar earthworks in Herefordshire and the Welsh Borders. Though not all published in one report but as sections of various reports we basically came to the same conclusion. Totally agree with the young lady.
Absolutely fantastic episode - my favourite ever! I've lived in the Chilterns area shown for decades and had tried to puzzle them out for myself, and failed completely of course. Both your work and Dr Wendy's input were superlative! I'm way past the age her book is aimed at but I will certainly buy a copy - and I've signed up for several newsletters
Really enjoyed that one. The LiDAR image appeared to show a topographical positioning. Has LiDAR been used across all the other Grims Ditches. It might produce further topographical correlations and a commonality.
Dr Wendy is exquisite! She's letting us all into the thoughts and process on a large scale about these. This has to be wildly fun for you to explore, thx for showing us another mysterious semi-prehistoric gigantic earthworks on the countryside-
Great watch. I like the idea that these are land use boundaries. I wrote a Hidden Wiltshire blog where we followed a park pale near Tisbury in Wiltshire. Structurally they are very similar to a Grim's Ditch and are described as forming the boundary of a medieval deer park. They were intended to keep the deer inside the park where they could be hunted. The bank would have been topped by a hedge or trees.
You have a similar idea to what I have. Iron age hunters herding deer into the ditches for an easier kill. We see gentle slopes and a shallow ditch but that is after thousands of years of weathering. They would have been much steeper and deeper during the iron age.
Man I love your videos so much. You are a true explorer, willing to venture out and put your theories to the test. And yeah, I think Wendy's notion of land separation for farming and grazing makes an awful lot of sense, tying in to the water catchment and the way they encircle a region.
What a gem of a video and content. BTW, I hope you are planning more content with Dr. Wendy Morrison. She has a great camera presence and charisma, she is super knowledgeable and with her calmness is a great counter for your style of presenting.
that seems implausible and nonsensical. How would a ditch earth work that took immense effort and energy be worth it just to create a boundary like that. Why not just a shrub fence or a regular fence, and why that shape that serves no boundary marker purpose?
@@HangEmHigher Earthwork is not that difficult to create, takes zero maintenance as we can see after thousands of years and create a natural boundary for livestock. I think it's a good hypothesis and makes quite a bit of sense. Also, your idea is not mutually exclusive with using earthwork boundaries. They probably used both. Just wicker or shrub fences don't leave such visible trace for us to follow
I like the agriculture theory. Looking at the lidar, was the purpose to keep the cattle etc. up and away from the local water sources so that they don’t “foul” the clean water supply?
I think it is likelier that if that was the case, that it was to keep animals away from the crops then to keep the water clean. Imagine what a bunch of cow or sheep would do to your fields. I do think they had some kind of practical use, from a military standpoint, the placement makes little sense and as a border, it seems like way too much work when a fence or placing a stone every 20 meters or so would have done the same job with far less work. Controlling either cattle or water seems like likely reason for building these things. The one problem with cattle is however that a fence of wood or stone would have also made the job and it would have required far less work even if it would have been harder to maintain during a long period. So I am more thinking they were for flood protection and maybe with an irrigation canal at the bottom of them. That could also keep the cattle in either at the top or bottom as a bonus, but if that was the only reason, it seems like a whole lot of work to accomplish the same work as a fence.
@@loke6664i agree, I think a fence would have been a better way to achieve the job if it was to segregate arable vs pastoral land. Therefore I think it was something else.
Highly unlikely they would put such an enormous amout of time and effort into keeping the catte on the high ground when a simple stick fence would work just fine!
@@russelljt3525 I leaning towards it being flood prevention based on the LIDAR map. Look on their placement and where the rivers are and the shape of them. You would have to look on the other similar structures to see if the same circumstances are there too of course. The wall would stop the top from flooding while the ditch would lead the water away, that is my hypothesis at least. I still think the placement points towards them being practical, from a military standpoint they don't really make any sense and if they were some kind of border, they wouldn't only be in some places and not in others.
When I saw the ditches at the headwaters of the streams and rivers I thought they might possibly have been to corral two or more streams into one to maximise flow in one watercourse! As stated by Paul there seems to be no defensive purpose in their construction, but the match with parish boundaries seems to be the people of one parish ensuring that spring water stays within their parish. The haphazard nature of the ditches seems to exclude defensive or livestock management purposes! But what do I know, I haven't studied the subject at all!
In Bo'ness, near where I live in Scotland, we also have a Grahams Dyke, or Grims Dyke. Its a street now but was related to the Antonine Wall which ran through there with a fort (one of many) on it.
Wendy is right to highlight that we mustn't fall into the trap of compressing a huge span of time like the Iron Age and that leads me onto my own ideas - for what they are worth! I'm as confident as any "pre-historian" can be that all the separate bits of Grim's Ditch are not linked. Built at different times, albeit in the Iron Age and Roman Iron Age. The Mongewell section is to me, very clearly tribal: a means of controlling passage down that section of the Thames Valley. I think things like "Cart Gap" on the map still denote the controlled access points. The limited archaeology down at the Mongewell end couldn't be more precise than late IA or early Roman. Personally, I don't have a problem with the idea of the tribal system still investing in this sort of thing during the early years of the occupation. It certainly went out of use once that tribal system had become redundant. Other sections in the Chilterns that you illustrated have been known for a long time to mark the change from clay to chalk and Wendy may be right about the land use idea, however, given the amount of effort that went into building them, my sense is that they're still linked to something a bit more significant than that alone: estate boundaries. Of course, the other enigmatic thing about Grim's Ditch, is why the English chose that name across such a large area. Different groups choosing the same name.
This makes me think of Geoffrey Drumm's fascinating hypothesis regarding ancient chemistry, the white horse chalk hills of the region and the various monuments. It was clearly a mammoth undertaking and not something done without good reason. The makeup of the chalk streams would suggest that maybe the ditches we gathering a specific resource for use in some sort of chemical reaction process.
Hi Paul, Well you didn't let us down with the hedges!! I think the lidar image was quite revealing at least in the zone you showed. Protection for the water source perhaps? I just can't imagine the effort required to build them. The landscape must have been different too. Very interesting to listen to Wendy and the outro was very sincere and funny at the same time. All the best!!
Protection from wandering cattle seems most likely to me, and worth the effort to safeguard water systems and arable activity. Pre-history must have been full of periods of transition as settled agricultural practices were developed. Thank you Paul for yet another fascinating bit of storytelling.....👍🏼
I was lucky enough to visit the HS2 dig when it was happening. It was incredibly interesting. Some of it had been ploughed flat but was well preserved below the top 30 cm.
I certainly don't know the original use(es) of the ditches, but thank you for featuring Dr. Morrison! She really communicated it all so clearly and I especially liked her reminder that we should be very careful of a single attribution to structures spanning a millenia of time!
A really interesting video Paul, possibly one of your very best, I've had to watch it twice to take it all in. I love Wendy's contribution and logic and it's already starting to make me think about banks and ditches around me here in Kent and have I been thinking about them incorrectly. Keep it up Paul, I really appreciate your time and effort.
Dr. Wendy's commentary is very compelling. The tensions between the agrarian and pastoralist go back at least as far as when Gilgamesh wrestled with Enkidu! Grims Ditch may have served a practical function as a cattle barrier, but also served to help define who had rights to use what land, and for what purpose. I also appreciated Paul's comment that despite their historical and modern use as land boundaries, we shouldn't assume that was their original purpose.
I grew up hearing about the Grims Ditch on Berkhamsted Common, Hertfordshire Chilterns. Now I live in Leeds and was surprised to find a Grims Ditch in West Yorkshire, between Leeds and Castleford. I don’t know how or if it relates to the more southern ditches but I like the idea I’m living near a Grims Ditch still!!
There's a lot of other ditches around the fringes of Leeds, such as the Aberford Dykes that include The Rein, South Dyke and Becca Banks. Others around the north include the Grey Ditch around Bradwell in Derbyshire and the Nico Ditch in Manchester.
I grew up 60’s & 70’s in Naphill, a village on the hills above the Hughenden valley. There was a similar ditch that was overgrown but still very visible and straight that ran from the village down the shallowest part of the hills to Hughenden park and the river Wye. We were always told it was an ancient sheep drove.
13:27 Thanks for not cutting that out -- was quite the unexpected laughter (not out of Schadenfreude, but out of the linguistic "I can stand up here [and also fall down -- says the universe]) 🖖
You make me feel quite homesick, particularly the Wantage area. I can remember as a teen walking in such areas with my father. Now live in Devon and am nearing 90.
The only qualifier I'd put on Wendy's ideas is that it's a lot of effort for a landmark. The ditches must have had some practical onsite applications, perhaps water management, land management, crop management for draining land with so many water sources, etc.
Deich or Dyke refers to the bank part of it though in most Germanic languages nowadays. What strikes me is that those are really really similar to forts found throughout the north of Germany which are circular fortifications around settlements from around about the same period of time.
So many large earthworks around. There's one near to me called the Grey Ditch which stretches across the whole valley. The history is fascinating. Love the videos who informative.
Hello from Australia, a land with not a lot of interesting history. I always enjoy the aerial videos showing the extent of the earth workings by my ancestors. I'm 9th generation Australian but according to my family tree am from Norfolk folk. Looking forward to each episode.
Excellent video, Paul. Thank you. I wonder if the purpose was to keep deer out of the garden. All that work could have been done over generations, each contributing another stretch to provide protection for a larger cropland. The incentive would have been great. The damage a herd of deer could have done could have made for a very hard winter. While the present form would not present a barrier, if the part of the berm which has eroded into the ditch were restored the greater difference in height could have made a very effective barrier to deer or other grazers, one which would have persisted for generations. I like the idea that groups may have invested in the future of generations to come.
That is a good idea and a possibility, but Iron age people were hunter gatherers for the most part, so I think they were more for hunting deer not keeping them out of the garden.
Great research thank you , Very similar to Dead Woman’s Ditch in the Quantocks in Somerset , there are ancient stories such in these woods, which has also some interesting carvings about the local dragon and green men at the Church in Crowcombe
Another fine day in the English fields and woods, Paul. Grims' Ditches are such a mysterious artifact from the Iron Age. You'd think as a trade or boundary barrier they would have used wood for a fence structure, instead of laboriously excavating by hand with crude tools a massive, lengthy earthwork. It's too short to be a defensive earthwork, as you said and you are right. Perhaps a water channel, but it is seemingly in the wrong place to conduit water to somewhere useful. I simply don't know, nor does anyone else, and that's what makes your video so interesting.
Rather than moving water to some where else, putting the run off back into the ground. Reducing errosion perhaps. We are seeing that in the modern context in areas where rainfall can be very high, but in very short durations.As with mosoon seasons currently in India and norther parts of Africa. Otherewise drought for the rest of the year. Perhaps there was a dryer time?
especially if the large side of the bank was on the down hill side. Just as we would build modern contour banks on farms to fill up with water and soak into the soil.
Your videos are so entertaining to watch and they’re really giving you a Feind of connection to long gone generations. I wish I’d find a similar channel for Bavaria
One at the bottom of my garden :-) Colchester Essex Gyrmes Dyke in places larger than the ones you have shown. Supposed to pre_date Roman . Seems a very expensive way to keep livestock off of your crops. In places the duke is 3m or more deep , it would have been a huge effort just to stop Daisy nibbling the corn.
I said a while back when you mentioned Grims Ditch that they reminded me of the reaves on Dartmoor, seems they may have served much the same purpose after all.
So, what Wendy is technically saying is, that the Grims Ditches were the very first Ha-Ha's of sort... I like that idea. That those ditches are Old, I figured from all your previous videos, I'm sure you mentioned more than once the Roman Road that's cutting through one. So they must be older. And what Wendy said about the Anglo-Saxons is logical too. It would make no sense for them building those ditches as boundary markers. From what I understand after watching several of Toms videos, the Anglo-Saxons oriented their boundaries around features in the land, so the ditches were already there. Great video. Very well researched and with an expert knowing what she's talking about.
I’m really loving all these videos thank you! I’ve spent longer than I care to admit trawling through old maps. There’s a huge area near us that I can barely find anything on and it is driving me absolutely BONKERS! 😂
That do sounds lovely, I think I am going to make myself a cup right now.😀 One of the amazing thing with Britain is just how many of these little known archaeological features that are basically everywhere.
The Grims ditch near Crowmarsh Oxon appears to direct travelers to an easy fording place across the Thames, so serving as a collecting feature for ancient wanderers
With no evidence of wars or conflict, plus us modern people not being as intelligent as our ancestors (ie we cannot comprehend what remains) I tend to lean on spiritual or religious, these people were so well tuned to nature, the sun, the night sky, all around the world remains of these eras baffle us still, indeed they may well be far far older than iron age, possibly moving things around at times or seasons for purposes significant to them, uncomprehendable to us, anyway great little film matie thanks for your efforts and enlightening research👍
Hi Paul, I don't know if you made this video from my comment suggestion in one of your previous recent videos, but thankyou for making it. I live right by a stretch of it and have always been fascinated.
I just can't get enough of this. It is exceptionally interesting. I like the agricultural theory, as it has the (IMHO) highest probability. Alternatively, my thoughts are: What if the "ditches" were just that. Ditches to guide water from point A to point B, as in a settlement? You demonstrated the locations of local streams, and we all know the streams of today are pretty much nothing like the positions of streams in the Iron Age. Just me thinking out loud, or in this case, with my keyboard. Cheers, Paul.
Looking on the proximity to water, I wonder if they could have been some kind of flood protection? Because if they were, they doesn't need to have been built by the same culture or at the same time, it might very well have been a project starting in the late bronze age and continuing up until the Romans. There are basically 3 options here, there could have been some kind of practical reason for building them. You know like an actual ditch to lead water, flood protection or to stop cattle and sheep from going between the 2 places. There could have been a military reason for them or they could have been some kind of cultural border. If they are practical, they would likely have been built over a long time, while if they are military or a border, they would probably have been built during a relatively short period. They must have been a massive undertaking and usually, military and civiv borders that have that much work on them are done during relatively short periods. Offa built his giant dyke in a short time and other similar features were being built in the same period but you don't find much like that going on in the later Saxon periods even if the military need was just as great. So I think we need to look on the landscape around them to figure out if they could have been practical or not. Where are nearby waterways, could there been flooding, what was going on at the top and bottom sides. Keeping sheep away from your fields is certainly one possibility for instance. The topographic map we saw is what make me think flood protection but that is just a tiny part of all the dykes.
as a kiddie i used to play on/in/near to the 'Grimms Ditch ' as it was at Potten End' , it went away across Berkhamsted common, but like almost everyone else, I took no notice, why should I? But after watching your video it got me thinking about where it went, to maybe linking with the section surrounding the headwaters of the river Chess and then westward again the most i knew about the village was that it was a once a nursery of exotic trees. i.e. I took it for grated that the monkey puzzle tree at one end of our front garden, and the flowering cherry at the other end were just 'normal', it wasn't 'till much later on in my life that I saw them and the other geographicly odd trees in the village as being out of place (being natural to northern India , the Himalayas, or even Japan), and now I'm old, and am nearly disabled, I find that that section just a couple of hundred yards from my house, may be connected with other sections of it through Beds, Herts down to the Hampshire/Dorset borders to me as a youngster it was just a ditch across the common which no doubt annoyed the golfers of Berkhamsted golf club who had yet another thing crossing the fairways (it crossed five and the practice fairway if i remember a'right), Would it have made a difference to me, i cant really say all these decades later, but it may have (I do remember following the ' Roman road' from Berkhamsted to Gaddesden Row, and found it fascinating as a 10 year olda) I took notice of my surroundings especially in Easter Ross (the far north of Scotland) but they made a big thing of their past, their history, Hertfordshire didn't.
The lidar images you showed made me think maybe these structures had some kind of hydrological function. They could have been built to manage water flow for different purposes: the arc shaped ones might have been primitive dams to impound water; the more linear ones might have been built to keep important travel ways dry in areas prone to flooding.
I was thinking similar thoughts... but to keep land dry downhill (limiting catchment), forcing water to pool in the ditch and flow around the sides, so the defensiveness is part dry bank, part boggy sides. Within, enough catchment to provide streams for clean water.
If you look at the ditch at Mongewell it runs along the edge of the Chiltern hills in a straight line directly towards the River Thames the land beyond towards Oxford is very flat flood plain type topography whereas the land on the otherside is valleys leading towards the Thames flowing downstream it's always looked like water management to me.
Very interesting and thought-provoking points made by Wendy and yourself. Perhaps more archaeological digs may provide clues to its uses over time. Fascinating stuff. Thank you.
Thankyou for the video , very interesting. These features you describe seem to appear all over Britain, and my home county of monmouthshire is no exception. There is a ditch feature with a bank on the uphill side running near Tregare church, close to where I live. It seems to run around a small hill alongside a modern road, where there is a farm called Henllys.Mentioned in Archaeology magazine in 1989.Thirty ft wide and Fifteen ft deep where it is most pronounced. There are similar features running alongside roads in mitchel Troy and Trellech. I tend to think defensive in origin and Iron age, as Tregare is supposed to be built on an Iron age camp, a possible satellite hillfort to Coed y Bonydd nr Usk, dated to 500Bc.
It seems there was a time in our history when our ancestors knew something we don't about Earth energies, how to benefit from them and amplify them. If you type 'what is a henge?' into Google Images and see the hundreds of examples of these henges from famous Glastonbury and Avebury down the road, these sites seem to be always surrounded by a similar depth ditch. This leads me to believe that the ditch has some sort of function rather than being aesthetic or defensive and perhaps these Grims ditches were also examples of Earth energy manipulation or amplification? It's just an idea, I noticed on your map of plotted Grims that a large number of them were along the 'St Micheal's; Ley Line roughly it seemed. Great video very fascinating now subbed. Keep up the good work Sir.
I am looking for Rumpelstitskin and fiddling, "Swinging on a gate" on my Strad. Very interesting speaker. Hello from 1904 Electric Company House on the rocky coast of Maine, US.
Arable and grazing are quite different- good fences make good neighbors; a stock barrier in an age before electric fences makes sense to me👍 by way of explaining; my Dad got the opportunity to farm a big block of land in Aotearoa as he qualified by virtue of farming experience, he passed an exam (he failed the first time) he had a bank deposit (a LOT more than I realised) AND he was a WWII returned serviceman. He couldn’t afford to fence for the first couple of years the 1500 acres of hill country, but he paid attention to how the stock moved through the landscape. When he could afford to he fenced the farm so stock would move naturally from one block to another. I’m guessing the Grim’s dyke was located the same way
About 4:00 the titles say 2 miles west of Wallingford, but i think you mean East...which is where the 3 mile straight section is. Was following on the map and it stumped me for a while. Very interesting video!
I feel they were a sort of friendly bordering between growing tribes that over time joined together and just recycled the structures for ,like suggested,animal management purposes.
The theory is intresting if it was to seperate diffrent types of food gathering, it would make sense. Digging a ditch would definitly be easier then erecting a fence or stone wall if you didn't have the tools for those.
Really interesting, balanced and well put together piece once again. The South Downs are covered in what have been referred to as “Cross Ridge Dykes” of similar construction but probably not on the same scale. I wonder if there is a relationship in use or an evolution of ideas here?
What a fantastic film!! I love the idea that they were farming related, some kind of stock enclosure or corral for animals. They could of course be boundary markers and livestock enclosures. I don’t think that they were defensive in any meaningful way as it would have taken 1,000s of warriors to man them strategically. It also makes you wonder whether Offa built his dyke on top of much older earthworks.
I live near a place where there is a Grim's Ditch crossing the Icknield Way. In fact the 'new' Ridgeway path runs along the Ditch for a good stretch. I wonder which came first.
I like the land use demarcation theory. I am also fond of the idea of a greater notion of land management lending itself to an expanded idea of hunter gatherer communities beyond mere vagrants. With this line of thinking the idea of building earthworks to easily showcase the usefulness of the land in the area seems like it could stretch back farther than the iron age, only new features being adapted as time, technology and culture shifted.
I am with Dr. Morrison on the ag/livestock management theory. I am certainly not an expert on auroch anatomy so am wondering if those beasts might have found it hard to navigate the ditch/bank and possibly then might follow the easier line toward an ambush site set by the locals. Not that this theory would be the ONLY reason for the construction but could be a side benefit.
In Huddersfield we have a route called Grimscar along which runs an old toll road surveyed by Blind Jack Metcalf. The local gossip is that he chose this route because it was the driest route out and a route that already existed. It runs against a steep wooded hillside. This makes me wonder if the route derivation is "Grim's Scar" or "Grim's Carr" since "scar" would mean hillside, while a "Carr" is scrubby woodland.
I love the way you plotted them on a topo map. Wasn’t able to freeze frame or look at all of them, but it did seem as though many of them were located at the head waters of streams or crossing small valleys. In the western United States, they have found stone structures built in the landscape that were used for herding and hunting wild game. As a child, I would hear stories from my father of how when they hunted deer in Pennsylvania, that they would position several hunters at the top of stream beds and/or ravines while others with circle down to the bottom and drive the game uphill toward the awaiting rifleman. Came tactic as the ancients in the west. If the structures were built in the opposite configuration, at the bottom, it would look as though they were built for catching and retaining water, but that clearly is not the case. Thanks for another interesting video.
Very similar to Dead Woman’s Ditch in the Quantocks in Somerset , there are ancient stories such in these woods, which has also some interesting carvings about the local dragon and green men at the Church in Crowcombe
Great video. Not sure will ever get to the bottom of these things, but as a born and bred Wallingfordian, wish you'd take Dr Morrison's lead on the pronunciation of Mongewell
Thanks for this. JRR Tolkien was also fascinated by these. They pop up several times in LOTR. For instance: ‘The dark line they had seen was not a line of trees but a line of bushes growing on the edge of a deep dike (ditch) with a steep wall (earthwork )on the further side. Tom (Bombadil) said that it had once been the boundary of a kingdom, but a very long time ago.’
Oh brilliant!
Thanks for delving (sorry) into these features, Paul. I’m always struck by the vast resources consumed in the making of earthworks: the innumerable hours of labour, the production & maintenance of the tools, the incredible number of calories the people had to consume to do this work. These ditches were clearly important to them.
And, I appreciate that you include Dr Morrison in your video on top of your reading and research about the subject. I recall you stating firmly that you are neither archeologist nor scientist, but you do follow the forms, and I think you contribute thereby to the wider knowledge base
Projects like ditch building are generally unifying. And remember, idle hands do the devils work, lol.
Huge amounts of labor also went into earthworks in the americas over thousands of years. My theory is that before the internet and TV, we got a lot done. ;-)
@@davidmcnaughty4889have you seen the prehistoric hunting walls used to drive herds of wild animals up against?
Seems like you could drive the animals up the valleys and then have them trapped against the grims ditch to despatch and collect
Anytime Paul dives in a hedge, we're in for a treat. ❤
A very interesting history lesson. I liked the archaeologist's statement that when people try to tell you something about prehistory as fact, they are probably trying to sell you something. Thank you for your time in making these videos.
Thank you
Great to see Dr Wendy Morrison's contribution to your film.
It was indeed a pleasure to have her on.
@@pwhitewick FYI you video's background music will be too loud and too intrusive for some though not all people.
Thank you for another "boots on the ground" exploration! Very interesting as we try to figure out why a prehistoric society invested such effort into earthworks.
*One* society? Over an origin period of order-of(1000 yrs)?
@@a.karley4672 Well, I suppose I was imprecise. I meant "society" in a very general way, as the people living there with some continuity assumed, that committed themsevles at some point to this large organized construction.
@ There is an error of logic - warned about in Statistics classes and other subjects - called "reification", which is "making a thing out of an apparent grouping".
For example, you have a bunch of numbers, and they show a particular, good, correlation between (say) IQ and big-toe-nail-thickness) and because the correlation is real and statistically reproducible, you infer that there is some "thing" relating big-toe-nail-thickness and "intelligence".
That may be true. But not necessarily.
Here we have a group of landscape features which share some characteristics (linearity, near-but-not-at the top of slopes, only 1000 age span between the members *which can be dated* ). But are they a *real* grouping? Or are they a grouping of structures that we think are related, but were really created for 5 different reasons, by 4 different groups in 3 different age periods.
At this moment in time, we just don't have the data to say if they're a real grouping, or several causally unrelated sets of artefacts.
It's a fine point. But it's important.
"More data!"
Yes, a large but scattered group of similarly organized groups with a way of living. Not necessarily ONE united group. If you get my meaning 🤓
Something I notice, all of them are at the start of a waterway, it appears to me, it could be a structure that ensures water, by building a mound, you increase slope, so surface water flows, plus it absorbs water, which over time releases it slowly. Now I could be way off, but working with environment (Australian bush regeneration), I saw this kind of effect naturally, the soil holds water and also prevents excess water being evaporated, also acting as a filter, so giving clean water
Great video, Paul. I love how you tell and show up a tidy story in 10 to 20 minutes. Also love seeing the countryside.
Thanks Paul, great video, you referred to it as a monument a few times but then reverted to structure which is much better, I like artifact which is what it is. Dr Wendy rather stole the show and was superb. Many thanks for a very well made and thoughtful vid.
She Stole the show epically didn't she.
She added to the show which was based on work done and organized by Paul. No Wendy here wo Paul, but yes, great info, and wats too consider the WHY? from all😀
I remember back in the 1990s being part of a project looking at Offas Dyke and we took the opertunity to look at a number of very similar earthworks in Herefordshire and the Welsh Borders. Though not all published in one report but as sections of various reports we basically came to the same conclusion. Totally agree with the young lady.
Absolutely fantastic episode - my favourite ever! I've lived in the Chilterns area shown for decades and had tried to puzzle them out for myself, and failed completely of course. Both your work and Dr Wendy's input were superlative!
I'm way past the age her book is aimed at but I will certainly buy a copy - and I've signed up for several newsletters
Really enjoyed that one.
The LiDAR image appeared to show a topographical positioning. Has LiDAR been used across all the other Grims Ditches. It might produce further topographical correlations and a commonality.
Dr Wendy is exquisite! She's letting us all into the thoughts and process on a large scale about these. This has to be wildly fun for you to explore, thx for showing us another mysterious semi-prehistoric gigantic earthworks on the countryside-
Great watch. I like the idea that these are land use boundaries. I wrote a Hidden Wiltshire blog where we followed a park pale near Tisbury in Wiltshire. Structurally they are very similar to a Grim's Ditch and are described as forming the boundary of a medieval deer park. They were intended to keep the deer inside the park where they could be hunted. The bank would have been topped by a hedge or trees.
You have a similar idea to what I have. Iron age hunters herding deer into the ditches for an easier kill. We see gentle slopes and a shallow ditch but that is after thousands of years of weathering. They would have been much steeper and deeper during the iron age.
Yes, I like this too. Practical important use, making life easier and more fun.
Man I love your videos so much. You are a true explorer, willing to venture out and put your theories to the test. And yeah, I think Wendy's notion of land separation for farming and grazing makes an awful lot of sense, tying in to the water catchment and the way they encircle a region.
What a gem of a video and content.
BTW, I hope you are planning more content with Dr. Wendy Morrison. She has a great camera presence and charisma, she is super knowledgeable and with her calmness is a great counter for your style of presenting.
Absolutely yes. We have a couple of things in the pipeline
Great to see Dr Wendy - she is fantastic isn't she! Love the idea that these are some kind of arable/pastoral boundary marker.
that seems implausible and nonsensical. How would a ditch earth work that took immense effort and energy be worth it just to create a boundary like that. Why not just a shrub fence or a regular fence, and why that shape that serves no boundary marker purpose?
@HangEmHigher So they should have put fences around hillforts instead of banks and ditches? What about later structures such as Wansdyke?
@@HangEmHigher Earthwork is not that difficult to create, takes zero maintenance as we can see after thousands of years and create a natural boundary for livestock. I think it's a good hypothesis and makes quite a bit of sense.
Also, your idea is not mutually exclusive with using earthwork boundaries. They probably used both. Just wicker or shrub fences don't leave such visible trace for us to follow
Sounds very plausible. You don’t want the animals shitting in your water source or eating your veggies, so good to keep them out. A bit like a haha.
Yes you're right - it does look like an old Railway line Paul!!! I used to Live in Hertfordshire but never heard of them - Thanks for sharing 🙂🚂🚂🚂
I like the agriculture theory. Looking at the lidar, was the purpose to keep the cattle etc. up and away from the local water sources so that they don’t “foul” the clean water supply?
I think it is likelier that if that was the case, that it was to keep animals away from the crops then to keep the water clean. Imagine what a bunch of cow or sheep would do to your fields.
I do think they had some kind of practical use, from a military standpoint, the placement makes little sense and as a border, it seems like way too much work when a fence or placing a stone every 20 meters or so would have done the same job with far less work.
Controlling either cattle or water seems like likely reason for building these things. The one problem with cattle is however that a fence of wood or stone would have also made the job and it would have required far less work even if it would have been harder to maintain during a long period. So I am more thinking they were for flood protection and maybe with an irrigation canal at the bottom of them. That could also keep the cattle in either at the top or bottom as a bonus, but if that was the only reason, it seems like a whole lot of work to accomplish the same work as a fence.
@@loke6664i agree, I think a fence would have been a better way to achieve the job if it was to segregate arable vs pastoral land. Therefore I think it was something else.
Highly unlikely they would put such an enormous amout of time and effort into keeping the catte on the high ground when a simple stick fence would work just fine!
@@russelljt3525 I leaning towards it being flood prevention based on the LIDAR map. Look on their placement and where the rivers are and the shape of them.
You would have to look on the other similar structures to see if the same circumstances are there too of course.
The wall would stop the top from flooding while the ditch would lead the water away, that is my hypothesis at least.
I still think the placement points towards them being practical, from a military standpoint they don't really make any sense and if they were some kind of border, they wouldn't only be in some places and not in others.
When I saw the ditches at the headwaters of the streams and rivers I thought they might possibly have been to corral two or more streams into one to maximise flow in one watercourse!
As stated by Paul there seems to be no defensive purpose in their construction, but the match with parish boundaries seems to be the people of one parish ensuring that spring water stays within their parish. The haphazard nature of the ditches seems to exclude defensive or livestock management purposes!
But what do I know, I haven't studied the subject at all!
In Bo'ness, near where I live in Scotland, we also have a Grahams Dyke, or Grims Dyke. Its a street now but was related to the Antonine Wall which ran through there with a fort (one of many) on it.
nice one again Paul , hello Wendy , 😊 real interesting , well done and thank you 😊
Very interesting and informative Paul. Most enjoyable. Thank you for all your explorations you do on our behalf. Amazing.
If I've learned anything in my studies of history, it's that everything is always more complex than I had ever imagined.
Oh very much yes
Wendy is right to highlight that we mustn't fall into the trap of compressing a huge span of time like the Iron Age and that leads me onto my own ideas - for what they are worth!
I'm as confident as any "pre-historian" can be that all the separate bits of Grim's Ditch are not linked. Built at different times, albeit in the Iron Age and Roman Iron Age.
The Mongewell section is to me, very clearly tribal: a means of controlling passage down that section of the Thames Valley. I think things like "Cart Gap" on the map still denote the controlled access points. The limited archaeology down at the Mongewell end couldn't be more precise than late IA or early Roman. Personally, I don't have a problem with the idea of the tribal system still investing in this sort of thing during the early years of the occupation. It certainly went out of use once that tribal system had become redundant.
Other sections in the Chilterns that you illustrated have been known for a long time to mark the change from clay to chalk and Wendy may be right about the land use idea, however, given the amount of effort that went into building them, my sense is that they're still linked to something a bit more significant than that alone: estate boundaries.
Of course, the other enigmatic thing about Grim's Ditch, is why the English chose that name across such a large area. Different groups choosing the same name.
This makes me think of Geoffrey Drumm's fascinating hypothesis regarding ancient chemistry, the white horse chalk hills of the region and the various monuments. It was clearly a mammoth undertaking and not something done without good reason. The makeup of the chalk streams would suggest that maybe the ditches we gathering a specific resource for use in some sort of chemical reaction process.
Very impressed by Paul's use of the British Documentary Crouch (BDC) which indicates exactly how profound and momentous what he says is.
Superb Paul, brilliant bit of research and fascinating history.
I believe they were agricultural in nature the way they skirt the washes, it seems like the most plausible explanation to me. 👍👍
Hi Paul, Well you didn't let us down with the hedges!!
I think the lidar image was quite revealing at least in the zone you showed. Protection for the water source perhaps?
I just can't imagine the effort required to build them. The landscape must have been different too. Very interesting to listen to Wendy and the outro was very sincere and funny at the same time.
All the best!!
Thank you David
Protection from wandering cattle seems most likely to me, and worth the effort to safeguard water systems and arable activity. Pre-history must have been full of periods of transition as settled agricultural practices were developed.
Thank you Paul for yet another fascinating bit of storytelling.....👍🏼
I was lucky enough to visit the HS2 dig when it was happening. It was incredibly interesting. Some of it had been ploughed flat but was well preserved below the top 30 cm.
I certainly don't know the original use(es) of the ditches, but thank you for featuring Dr. Morrison! She really communicated it all so clearly and I especially liked her reminder that we should be very careful of a single attribution to structures spanning a millenia of time!
A really interesting video Paul, possibly one of your very best, I've had to watch it twice to take it all in. I love Wendy's contribution and logic and it's already starting to make me think about banks and ditches around me here in Kent and have I been thinking about them incorrectly. Keep it up Paul, I really appreciate your time and effort.
Many thanks!
Dr. Wendy's commentary is very compelling. The tensions between the agrarian and pastoralist go back at least as far as when Gilgamesh wrestled with Enkidu! Grims Ditch may have served a practical function as a cattle barrier, but also served to help define who had rights to use what land, and for what purpose. I also appreciated Paul's comment that despite their historical and modern use as land boundaries, we shouldn't assume that was their original purpose.
I grew up hearing about the Grims Ditch on Berkhamsted Common, Hertfordshire Chilterns. Now I live in Leeds and was surprised to find a Grims Ditch in West Yorkshire, between Leeds and Castleford. I don’t know how or if it relates to the more southern ditches but I like the idea I’m living near a Grims Ditch still!!
There's a lot of other ditches around the fringes of Leeds, such as the Aberford Dykes that include The Rein, South Dyke and Becca Banks. Others around the north include the Grey Ditch around Bradwell in Derbyshire and the Nico Ditch in Manchester.
I grew up 60’s & 70’s in Naphill, a village on the hills above the Hughenden valley. There was a similar ditch that was overgrown but still very visible and straight that ran from the village down the shallowest part of the hills to Hughenden park and the river Wye. We were always told it was an ancient sheep drove.
13:27 Thanks for not cutting that out -- was quite the unexpected laughter (not out of Schadenfreude, but out of the linguistic "I can stand up here [and also fall down -- says the universe]) 🖖
Great watch. Really interesting, and Wendy explained the reality very well indeed. Thank you
Glad you enjoyed it
You make me feel quite homesick, particularly the Wantage area. I can remember as a teen walking in such areas with my father. Now live in Devon and am nearing 90.
The only qualifier I'd put on Wendy's ideas is that it's a lot of effort for a landmark. The ditches must have had some practical onsite applications, perhaps water management, land management, crop management for draining land with so many water sources, etc.
Wow, your channel is really growing. Congratulations and thank you for another brilliant video.
Deich or Dyke refers to the bank part of it though in most Germanic languages nowadays. What strikes me is that those are really really similar to forts found throughout the north of Germany which are circular fortifications around settlements from around about the same period of time.
So many large earthworks around. There's one near to me called the Grey Ditch which stretches across the whole valley. The history is fascinating. Love the videos who informative.
And yep thanks for your studies, really pleased to find you
Welcome!
Hello from Australia, a land with not a lot of interesting history. I always enjoy the aerial videos showing the extent of the earth workings by my ancestors. I'm 9th generation Australian but according to my family tree am from Norfolk folk. Looking forward to each episode.
Excellent video, Paul. Thank you. I wonder if the purpose was to keep deer out of the garden. All that work could have been done over generations, each contributing another stretch to provide protection for a larger cropland. The incentive would have been great. The damage a herd of deer could have done could have made for a very hard winter. While the present form would not present a barrier, if the part of the berm which has eroded into the ditch were restored the greater difference in height could have made a very effective barrier to deer or other grazers, one which would have persisted for generations. I like the idea that groups may have invested in the future of generations to come.
That is a good idea and a possibility, but Iron age people were hunter gatherers for the most part, so I think they were more for hunting deer not keeping them out of the garden.
I walked Offas Dyke Path last summer and couldn't believe how much effort that must have took. Really interesting all these old earthworks.
Would love to take a look myself one day soon
Great research thank you , Very similar to Dead Woman’s Ditch in the Quantocks in Somerset , there are ancient stories such in these woods, which has also some interesting carvings about the local dragon and green men at the Church in Crowcombe
Fascinating Paul. My Bag entirely. Thank you Wendy, really good food for thought.
Another fine day in the English fields and woods, Paul.
Grims' Ditches are such a mysterious artifact from the Iron Age. You'd think as a trade or boundary barrier they would have used wood for a fence structure, instead of laboriously excavating by hand with crude tools a massive, lengthy earthwork. It's too short to be a defensive earthwork, as you said and you are right. Perhaps a water channel, but it is seemingly in the wrong place to conduit water to somewhere useful.
I simply don't know, nor does anyone else, and that's what makes your video so interesting.
Rather than moving water to some where else, putting the run off back into the ground. Reducing errosion perhaps. We are seeing that in the modern context in areas where rainfall can be very high, but in very short durations.As with mosoon seasons currently in India and norther parts of Africa. Otherewise drought for the rest of the year. Perhaps there was a dryer time?
especially if the large side of the bank was on the down hill side. Just as we would build modern contour banks on farms to fill up with water and soak into the soil.
Your videos are so entertaining to watch and they’re really giving you a Feind of connection to long gone generations. I wish I’d find a similar channel for Bavaria
One at the bottom of my garden :-) Colchester Essex Gyrmes Dyke in places larger than the ones you have shown. Supposed to pre_date Roman . Seems a very expensive way to keep livestock off of your crops. In places the duke is 3m or more deep , it would have been a huge effort just to stop Daisy nibbling the corn.
I said a while back when you mentioned Grims Ditch that they reminded me of the reaves on Dartmoor, seems they may have served much the same purpose after all.
So, what Wendy is technically saying is, that the Grims Ditches were the very first Ha-Ha's of sort... I like that idea. That those ditches are Old, I figured from all your previous videos, I'm sure you mentioned more than once the Roman Road that's cutting through one. So they must be older. And what Wendy said about the Anglo-Saxons is logical too. It would make no sense for them building those ditches as boundary markers. From what I understand after watching several of Toms videos, the Anglo-Saxons oriented their boundaries around features in the land, so the ditches were already there.
Great video. Very well researched and with an expert knowing what she's talking about.
I thought they might be ha-has, too. Wendy was very interesting.
Ha ha .
Thanks
I wish your videos were longer. They're interesting and fun.
Glad you like them!
I’m really loving all these videos thank you! I’ve spent longer than I care to admit trawling through old maps. There’s a huge area near us that I can barely find anything on and it is driving me absolutely BONKERS! 😂
Another excellent video Paul.
Many thanks!
Paul…….please go north ( Yorkshire ) we too have plenty of to discover. We’ll have a hot cup of Yorkshire Tea waiting for you and great chatter.
That do sounds lovely, I think I am going to make myself a cup right now.😀
One of the amazing thing with Britain is just how many of these little known archaeological features that are basically everywhere.
The Grims ditch near Crowmarsh Oxon appears to direct travelers to an easy fording place across the Thames, so serving as a collecting feature for ancient wanderers
There's a Grimes Dike near Whinmoor just NE of Leeds.
great video as always
With no evidence of wars or conflict, plus us modern people not being as intelligent as our ancestors (ie we cannot comprehend what remains) I tend to lean on spiritual or religious, these people were so well tuned to nature, the sun, the night sky, all around the world remains of these eras baffle us still, indeed they may well be far far older than iron age, possibly moving things around at times or seasons for purposes significant to them, uncomprehendable to us, anyway great little film matie thanks for your efforts and enlightening research👍
👏
Dr. Wendy's slide into advert was brilliant. :)
Hi Paul, I don't know if you made this video from my comment suggestion in one of your previous recent videos, but thankyou for making it. I live right by a stretch of it and have always been fascinated.
I just can't get enough of this. It is exceptionally interesting. I like the agricultural theory, as it has the (IMHO) highest probability. Alternatively, my thoughts are: What if the "ditches" were just that. Ditches to guide water from point A to point B, as in a settlement? You demonstrated the locations of local streams, and we all know the streams of today are pretty much nothing like the positions of streams in the Iron Age. Just me thinking out loud, or in this case, with my keyboard. Cheers, Paul.
Not a bad notion, but many of the ditches are very undulating as to make that impractical. The agricultural notion though... thats won me over.
Looking on the proximity to water, I wonder if they could have been some kind of flood protection? Because if they were, they doesn't need to have been built by the same culture or at the same time, it might very well have been a project starting in the late bronze age and continuing up until the Romans.
There are basically 3 options here, there could have been some kind of practical reason for building them. You know like an actual ditch to lead water, flood protection or to stop cattle and sheep from going between the 2 places.
There could have been a military reason for them or they could have been some kind of cultural border.
If they are practical, they would likely have been built over a long time, while if they are military or a border, they would probably have been built during a relatively short period. They must have been a massive undertaking and usually, military and civiv borders that have that much work on them are done during relatively short periods. Offa built his giant dyke in a short time and other similar features were being built in the same period but you don't find much like that going on in the later Saxon periods even if the military need was just as great.
So I think we need to look on the landscape around them to figure out if they could have been practical or not. Where are nearby waterways, could there been flooding, what was going on at the top and bottom sides. Keeping sheep away from your fields is certainly one possibility for instance. The topographic map we saw is what make me think flood protection but that is just a tiny part of all the dykes.
as a kiddie i used to play on/in/near to the 'Grimms Ditch ' as it was at Potten End' , it went away across Berkhamsted common, but like almost everyone else, I took no notice, why should I?
But after watching your video it got me thinking about where it went, to maybe linking with the section surrounding the headwaters of the river Chess and then westward again
the most i knew about the village was that it was a once a nursery of exotic trees. i.e. I took it for grated that the monkey puzzle tree at one end of our front garden, and the flowering cherry at the other end were just 'normal', it wasn't 'till much later on in my life that I saw them and the other geographicly odd trees in the village as being out of place (being natural to northern India , the Himalayas, or even Japan),
and now I'm old, and am nearly disabled, I find that that section just a couple of hundred yards from my house, may be connected with other sections of it through Beds, Herts down to the Hampshire/Dorset borders
to me as a youngster it was just a ditch across the common which no doubt annoyed the golfers of Berkhamsted golf club who had yet another thing crossing the fairways (it crossed five and the practice fairway if i remember a'right),
Would it have made a difference to me, i cant really say all these decades later, but it may have (I do remember following the ' Roman road' from Berkhamsted to Gaddesden Row, and found it fascinating as a 10 year olda)
I took notice of my surroundings especially in Easter Ross (the far north of Scotland) but they made a big thing of their past, their history, Hertfordshire didn't.
The lidar images you showed made me think maybe these structures had some kind of hydrological function. They could have been built to manage water flow for different purposes: the arc shaped ones might have been primitive dams to impound water; the more linear ones might have been built to keep important travel ways dry in areas prone to flooding.
I was thinking similar thoughts... but to keep land dry downhill (limiting catchment), forcing water to pool in the ditch and flow around the sides, so the defensiveness is part dry bank, part boggy sides. Within, enough catchment to provide streams for clean water.
If you look at the ditch at Mongewell it runs along the edge of the Chiltern hills in a straight line directly towards the River Thames the land beyond towards Oxford is very flat flood plain type topography whereas the land on the otherside is valleys leading towards the Thames flowing downstream it's always looked like water management to me.
Thanks for the story and for the preservation. The ditch looks like trade and/or pilgrimage routes
Awesome as usual! Cheers!
Very interesting and thought-provoking points made by Wendy and yourself. Perhaps more archaeological digs may provide clues to its uses over time. Fascinating stuff. Thank you.
7:23 “Is there a Grim’s Ditch near you?”
“Shire is!”
Thankyou for the video , very interesting. These features you describe seem to appear all over Britain, and my home county of monmouthshire is no exception. There is a ditch feature with a bank on the uphill side running near Tregare church, close to where I live. It seems to run around a small hill alongside a modern road, where there is a farm called Henllys.Mentioned in Archaeology magazine in 1989.Thirty ft wide and Fifteen ft deep where it is most pronounced. There are similar features running alongside roads in mitchel Troy and Trellech. I tend to think defensive in origin and Iron age, as Tregare is supposed to be built on an Iron age camp, a possible satellite hillfort to Coed y Bonydd nr Usk, dated to 500Bc.
Merci Monsieur well done. Maybe they were part of droveways for husbandry of sheep and cattle. Your guest hinted at it.
Fascinating. Thanks again.
Our pleasure!
It seems there was a time in our history when our ancestors knew something we don't about Earth energies, how to benefit from them and amplify them. If you type 'what is a henge?' into Google Images and see the hundreds of examples of these henges from famous Glastonbury and Avebury down the road, these sites seem to be always surrounded by a similar depth ditch. This leads me to believe that the ditch has some sort of function rather than being aesthetic or defensive and perhaps these Grims ditches were also examples of Earth energy manipulation or amplification? It's just an idea, I noticed on your map of plotted Grims that a large number of them were along the 'St Micheal's; Ley Line roughly it seemed. Great video very fascinating now subbed. Keep up the good work Sir.
Someone gets it 👏 👏 👏
There's a Grim's Ditch in Leeds. A visible part runs in the eastern boundary of Temple Newsom and through some fields to the north.
I am looking for Rumpelstitskin and fiddling, "Swinging on a gate" on my Strad.
Very interesting speaker.
Hello from 1904 Electric Company House on the rocky coast of Maine, US.
Arable and grazing are quite different- good fences make good neighbors; a stock barrier in an age before electric fences makes sense to me👍 by way of explaining; my Dad got the opportunity to farm a big block of land in Aotearoa as he qualified by virtue of farming experience, he passed an exam (he failed the first time) he had a bank deposit (a LOT more than I realised) AND he was a WWII returned serviceman. He couldn’t afford to fence for the first couple of years the 1500 acres of hill country, but he paid attention to how the stock moved through the landscape. When he could afford to he fenced the farm so stock would move naturally from one block to another. I’m guessing the Grim’s dyke was located the same way
About 4:00 the titles say 2 miles west of Wallingford, but i think you mean East...which is where the 3 mile straight section is. Was following on the map and it stumped me for a while. Very interesting video!
I feel they were a sort of friendly bordering between growing tribes that over time joined together and just recycled the structures for ,like suggested,animal management purposes.
I also quite like the new map room (filiming studio)! And the lighting seems pretty well/fitting now.
Thank you Paul for another interesting topic to ponder on 🙂.
The theory is intresting if it was to seperate diffrent types of food gathering, it would make sense. Digging a ditch would definitly be easier then erecting a fence or stone wall if you didn't have the tools for those.
Really interesting, balanced and well put together piece once again. The South Downs are covered in what have been referred to as “Cross Ridge Dykes” of similar construction but probably not on the same scale. I wonder if there is a relationship in use or an evolution of ideas here?
What a fantastic film!! I love the idea that they were farming related, some kind of stock enclosure or corral for animals. They could of course be boundary markers and livestock enclosures. I don’t think that they were defensive in any meaningful way as it would have taken 1,000s of warriors to man them strategically.
It also makes you wonder whether Offa built his dyke on top of much older earthworks.
I live near a place where there is a Grim's Ditch crossing the Icknield Way. In fact the 'new' Ridgeway path runs along the Ditch for a good stretch. I wonder which came first.
Excellent as ever. I think "sub-sizeable" (1:00) is my new favourite word 😉.
It's now in my formal vocabulary!
You are pretty good at this stuff! I really enjoyed the video. So... thanks.
I like the land use demarcation theory.
I am also fond of the idea of a greater notion of land management lending itself to an expanded idea of hunter gatherer communities beyond mere vagrants.
With this line of thinking the idea of building earthworks to easily showcase the usefulness of the land in the area seems like it could stretch back farther than the iron age, only new features being adapted as time, technology and culture shifted.
I am with Dr. Morrison on the ag/livestock management theory. I am certainly not an expert on auroch anatomy so am wondering if those beasts might have found it hard to navigate the ditch/bank and possibly then might follow the easier line toward an ambush site set by the locals. Not that this theory would be the ONLY reason for the construction but could be a side benefit.
Yup, I like it. Something I had not considered.
Truly amazing work!
Thanks a lot!
In Huddersfield we have a route called Grimscar along which runs an old toll road surveyed by Blind Jack Metcalf. The local gossip is that he chose this route because it was the driest route out and a route that already existed. It runs against a steep wooded hillside. This makes me wonder if the route derivation is "Grim's Scar" or "Grim's Carr" since "scar" would mean hillside, while a "Carr" is scrubby woodland.
I love the way you plotted them on a topo map. Wasn’t able to freeze frame or look at all of them, but it did seem as though many of them were located at the head waters of streams or crossing small valleys.
In the western United States, they have found stone structures built in the landscape that were used for herding and hunting wild game. As a child, I would hear stories from my father of how when they hunted deer in Pennsylvania, that they would position several hunters at the top of stream beds and/or ravines while others with circle down to the bottom and drive the game uphill toward the awaiting rifleman. Came tactic as the ancients in the west.
If the structures were built in the opposite configuration, at the bottom, it would look as though they were built for catching and retaining water, but that clearly is not the case.
Thanks for another interesting video.
I think you are right. I've seen similar things in NW New Jersey and Eastern PA woods.
Very similar to Dead Woman’s Ditch in the Quantocks in Somerset , there are ancient stories such in these woods, which has also some interesting carvings about the local dragon and green men at the Church in Crowcombe
Great video. Not sure will ever get to the bottom of these things, but as a born and bred Wallingfordian, wish you'd take Dr Morrison's lead on the pronunciation of Mongewell
Alas... she taught me after I had made most of the video
@@pwhitewickHaha, did wonder if it was a matter of chronology 😃
Amazing perspective on interpretation
Hi Paul. There's another Grim's Ditch at Stanmore/Harrow Weald in North-west London, if you haven't got that one already! :o)
There's a long stretch of it called Grime's Bank in the forester area north east of Tadley/Aldermaston in Berkshire.
Missed that
I like the agricultural separation idea. Like fences. The ditches may have been dams to catch water for livestock and the parapet acted as a fence.