Listing
Search the List

What is Listing?

Listing Guidance

Apply for Listing

Missing Pieces Project

Blue Plaque Scheme
Listing

Find out about listed buildings and other protected sites, and search the National Heritage List for England (NHLE).

Find out about listing

Terracotta tiles on the roof of Saintoft Lodge, Newton-on-Rawcliffe, Ryedale, North Yorkshire. Grade II listed © Historic England Archive DP371715
Advice
Climate Change

Heritage at Risk

Your Home

Technical Guidance

Planning

Caring for Heritage

Constructive Conservation
Advice

See our extensive range of expert advice to help you care for and protect historic places.

Get our advice

A contractor cutting bricks for the wall of the partially-restored wild and natural walled garden at Warley Place, Brentwood. Explore our technical advice section © Historic England Archive DP313199
Research
Our Research Strategy and Agenda

Research Governance

Latest Research

Research Methods

Current Research

Research Results

Support & Collaboration

Inclusive Heritage

Heritage Counts
Research

Discover and use our high-quality applied research to support the protection and management of the historic environment.

Discover our research

Archaeologist Dr David Neal discussing his illustration of the mosaic being excavated at Rutland Roman Villa with members of the University of Leicester Archaeological Services team View image DP264265 © Historic England
Images & Books
Find Photos

Search All Publications

Buy Books

The Historic England Archive
Images & Books

Historic England holds an extensive range of publications and historic collections in its public archive covering the historic environment.

Browse our collections

Children play with a doll and a pram on the cobbled Church Path in Queen Camel, Somerset, in April 1953. At the far end of the path is the tower of the Church of St Barnabas, which dates to the 14th century. Photographer: John Gay Image reference: AA091596 © Historic England Archive
Services & Skills
Education

Grants

Our Planning Services

Training & Skills

Archive Services

Heritage Action Zones

Levelling Up Places Service
Services & Skills

Find out about services offered by Historic England for funding, planning, education and research, as well as training and skill development.

Learn about our services

Heritage Apprentices in a training session on the Researching The Historic Environment module and training in Architectural Photography. Find out more about Heritage Apprenticeships © Historic England Archive DP347660
What's New
News

In Your Area

Historic England Blog

Latest Research

Heritage Online Debate

Statements

Stay up to Date
What's New

Read about our current news, projects and campaigns nationally and in your area.

Catch up with what's new

Two horsemen reading The Sportsman, 30 Oct 1902, Farnborough, Stratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire. Part of the Alfred Newton and Sons collection. Source Historic England Archive. BB98/02592
About Us
What We Do

Who We Are

How We Are Funded

Contact Us

Careers

Volunteer with Historic England
About Us

Historic England is the public body that helps people care for, enjoy and celebrate England's spectacular historic environment.

Find out more

Mountbatten House (formerly Gateway House), Basing View, Basingstoke, the former headquarters for the paper merchants Wiggins Teape by Arup Associates. Listed at Grade II. © Historic England
Sign in
Manage my account

Sign out

Section of the north Oxfordshire Grim's Ditch running east from the River Evenlode opposite Cornbury Park

Listed on the National Heritage List for England. Search over 400,000 listed places

Overview

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1012902
Date first listed:: 08-Apr-1951

The Missing Pieces Project

Share your view of unique places.

Add your contribution

Location

Location of this list entry and nearby places that are also listed. Use our map search to find more listed places.

This map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale.

What is the National Heritage List for England?

The National Heritage List for England is a unique register of our country's most significant historic buildings and sites. The places on the list are protected by law and most are not open to the public.

The list includes:

🏠 Buildings
🏰 Scheduled monuments
🌳 Parks and gardens
⚔️ Battlefields
⚓ Shipwrecks

Find out more about listing

Historic England Archive

Search over 1 million photographs and drawings from the 1850s to the present day using our images archive.

Find Photos

Official list entry

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1012902
Date first listed:: 08-Apr-1951
Date of most recent amendment:: 03-Oct-1995

Location

The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

County:: Oxfordshire
District:: West Oxfordshire (District Authority)
Parish:: Charlbury
National Grid Reference:: SP 35949 18491

Reasons for Designation

The north Oxfordshire Grim's Ditch is a series of discrete linear earthworks of Iron Age date which together make up at least one segmented circuit, situated between the valleys of the Rivers Evenlode, Glyme and Windrush in an area of the eastern Cotswolds. In recent years evidence for an outer concentric circuit has come to light, largely from the study of cropmarks visible on aerial photographs. The area enclosed by the inner circuit is 12 sq km and the outer circuit encloses between 60 and 70 sq km. The earthworks which define this area were only built in open country leaving apparent gaps in the areas previously forested. Where visible, the Grim's Ditch always includes a rampart of dumped earth and stone, a berm and outer ditch and, in places, a narrow palisade trench beyond. It is believed that, together, these components served to enclose and divide an area of land and provide control over access through the open country which existed between heavily forested areas. The ditch is Iron Age in date and provides evidence of how the landscape was managed and divided in the period immediately prior to the Roman Conquest. The high concentration of sites representing Iron Age ritual and agricultural activity which occur within the area defined by the ditch confirms the view that it served to define an area which was of particular significance to its builders. All sections surviving as visible earthworks, and sections identified by aerial photography which are integral to a general understanding of the nature and extent of Grim's Ditch, will normally merit statutory protection.

This section of Grim's Ditch east of the River Evenlode survives well and will contain archaeological and environmental evidence relating to its construction and the landscape in which it was built. Its riverside location is conducive to the survival of waterlogged deposits.

Details

The monument includes a section of the north Oxfordshire Grim's Ditch situated adjacent to the River Evenlode, east of Cornbury Park. The ditch and rampart run from north east to south west for a distance of 200m. The eastern end has been destroyed by the line of the Charlbury to Witney road and landscaping beyond it to the east. The extreme western end of the section was destroyed by the railway cutting (now disused) which runs parallel to the River Evenlode. The surviving section includes an earthwork bank 6m wide and up to 1m high. Beyond the bank, to the south, lies a parallel ditch c.6m wide which has become infilled over the years but remains visible as a slight depression at ground level, clearly visible on aerial photographs. This is separated from the rampart by a c.4m wide berm. Until the late 1970's the bank formed a field boundary on which a thorn hedge stood. The fields have now been turned into one and the hedge removed.

MAP EXTRACT The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:: 21838
Legacy System:: RSM

Sources

Books and journals
Copeland, T, 'Oxoniensia' in The North Oxfordshire Grim's Ditch : A Fieldwork Survey, , Vol. 1984, (1984), 289
Other
PRN 8911, C.A.O., Grim's Ditch, (1989)
Title: Ordnance Survey 1:10000 Source Date: 1980 Author: Publisher: Surveyor: SP 31 NE

Legal

This monument is scheduled under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979 as amended as it appears to the Secretary of State to be of national importance. This entry is a copy, the original is held by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.