Looking north west along the 2000 year old Car Dyke from Whitepost Road
Posted on 03/12/2018 11:56:13 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
The Car Dyke is an eighty mile artificial water channel, thought to have been constructed by the Romans from the first century AD... The Dyke runs along the western edge of the fens from the River Cam near Cambridge all the way to the River Witham, just south of Lincoln. Many stretches are protected as a scheduled ancient monument... William Stukeley... came up with the idea that Car Dyke was a canal... to supply the Roman Armies of the north with grain and food from Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire with drainage as a secondary function, a view which still perpetuates until today...
In 1989 the Trust for Lincolnshire Archaeology investigated of part of the Lincolnshire section of Car Dyke in Baston, just a few miles north of Eye. The excavations showed that the dyke was originally 13 metres wide and 3.6 metres deep and the Dyke originally contained fast flowing water. They came to the conclusion that it was constructed as a catchwater drain but couldn't rule out it being used as a local means of transportation. In 120AD the Roman Emperor Hadrian visited Britain and the sections dating from this period may be associated with his plan to settle the Fens, which gives weight to the drainage theory.
Excavations at the south end of Car Dyke in Waterbeach near Cambridge in the 1990s found slightly different results and what seemed to be the remains of a Roman-era boat and cargo of pottery. Other archaeological investigations have found coal from the Midlands in use at a cluster of Roman-era coal-burning forges sited between Cambridge and The Wash and these provide evidence of trade and transport along the Car Dyke. At its northern end accounts of Roman Britain describe it as an extension of the Foss Dyke.
(Excerpt) Read more at eyepeterborough.co.uk ...
Looking north west along the 2000 year old Car Dyke from Whitepost Road
Plan view of Car Dyke
Car Dyke, northern end | River Welland, east of Lincoln, UK | photo PHEW | circa 130 AD | Engineering Timelines | associated engineer
Originally thought to be a navigable waterway and now thought to be a Roman catchment drain, Car Dyke runs from Lincoln to Peterborough along the foot of the Lincolnshire Wolds.
If the suggestion of Roman construction is correct, then Car Dyke may be thought of as the first large scale effort to improve the Fenland. As the Fens are relatively flat, it was quite an achievement to keep a constant gradient for water flow and arrange continual fall from each upland catchment area as it passes by.
The dyke has silted up somewhat since Roman times and has been recut in various places. We do not know its original dimensions but near Lincoln it may of been some 45ft wide and 13ft deep. The picture was taken in 1978 at Potterhanworth Booths.
The southern end is at OS grid reference TL200980.
WOW
"All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?"
—Life of Brian
:)
“WOW”
I’m with you. The ability of them to build aquaducts for hundreds of miles, or even this dyke for 70 miles is amazing, considering they have to get the slope just right (i.e., too little and the water pools or spills over, too much and they quickly run out of vertical drop to use. And then the weight and subsidence issues - WOW!. And this is based on my experience in trying to lay 100 feet of 4” PVC drain line...not as easy as it looks.
And here I thought this would be an article about some motor-head lesbian.
The Lesbarus.
What perplexes me is that these earthen structures have not fallen into invisibility through erosion and become mere depressions that are hardly recognizable as man-made.
The other factor is being able to run a line of levels this far across terrain and get the right slope to encourage adequate flow without over flowing.
Parts of the original canal silted up. About 300-350 years ago there was a need to build a canal system in England to drain off standing water and open up more land for agriculture, which also transitioned into the pre-rail heavy cargo transit.
It’s longer than Hadrian’s Wall, and wasn’t built by Offa. :^)
They had a lot of experience with water handling in the form of gravity-fed (rather than pressure-fed) aqueducts and inground sewer systems that didn’t clog.
Gracias!
Heh. Mercia built a wall to protect its border. ‘Merica should do likewise.
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