Section of the Danes' Dyke between the B1255 and B1229 roads

Reasons for Designation

Linear boundaries are substantial earthwork features comprising single or multiple ditches and banks which may extend over distances varying between less than 1km to over 10km. They survive as earthworks or as linear features visible as cropmarks on aerial photographs or as a combination of both. The evidence of excavation and study of associated monuments demonstrate that their construction spans the millennium from the Middle Bronze Age, although they may have been re-used later. The scale of many linear boundaries has been taken to indicate that they were constructed by large social groups and were used to mark important boundaries in the landscape; their impressive scale displaying the corporate prestige of their builders. They would have been powerful symbols, often with religious associations, used to define and order the territorial holdings of those groups who constructed them. Linear earthworks are of considerable importance for the analysis of settlement and land use in the Bronze Age; all well preserved examples will normally merit statutory protection.

The Danes' Dyke is extremely well preserved and remains a significant boundary in the modern landscape. It will retain important archaeological and environmental information relating to the date of its construction and function, together with evidence of the contemporary climate and ecology of the locality and subsequent history of use.

Details

The monument includes part of the central section of the linear bank and ditch system known as the Danes' Dyke which, in its entirety, runs from the coast north of Flamborough Head south for a distance of two and a half miles, enclosing an area of approximately five square miles of headland. This section of the monument is situated between the B1255 and the B1229 roads. The Danes' Dyke is thought to have been constructed in the Bronze Age along with other linear earthworks on the nearby Yorkshire Wolds. Its name, however, suggests a later date and it would seem likely that it was reused as a defensive earthwork both by Iron Age tribes and probably also at some point in the late ninth and tenth centuries AD. The dyke effectively cuts off the Flamborough peninsula, which is also naturally defended on all sides by steep chalk cliffs, converting it into a promontory fort. The area thus enclosed is large enough and has sufficient resources, to support a sizeable community, with sources of fresh water available. Throughout most of its length the dyke has a single bank and ditch, although in places additional stretches of parallel bank and ditch also exist. Continuing north from the extreme southernmost portion, the monument continues as triple banks for a short distance, a feature thought to be indicative of the existence of an original entrance here, after which it reduces again to double banks. The earthern ramparts vary in height according to the immediate topography of the terrain, from around 3m to over 4m in height on the east side to over 12m on the west side where it is exaggerated by the presence of the ditch, which continues to be deep and wet in places. There are old gravel workings which have disrupted the system over a length of around 20m. Northward to the B1229, the system again becomes a single bank and ditch earthwork. Although the sections of the dyke system across the Flamborough peninsula abut each other, for purposes of clarity and administration, the sections have been defined as separate schedulings. The modern paved surface of both the B1255 and the B1229 are excluded from the scheduling, although the ground beneath them, representing the surviving buried ditch deposits, is included. All modern post and wire fences separating the monument from the farmland which bounds it to the east and west are also excluded from the scheduling, althouth the ground beneath them is included.

MAP EXTRACT The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract. It includes a 5 metre boundary around the archaeological features, considered to be essential for the monument's support and preservation.

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

26507

Legacy System:

RSM

Sources

Books and journals
The Victoria History of the County of East Riding of Yorkshire, (1974), 151-12
Forty years' research in British and Saxon Burial Mounds, (1905), p367
Pitt-Rivers, Major General, Papers of the British Association, (1881), p690
Ramm, H, RAI Summer Meeting Proceedings, 18/7/84 in Danes' Dyke, Flamborough (TA216694-213732), (1984), pp37-39

Other
Environmental Consultancy, Univ. of Sheffield, Danes Dyke: Site Management Plan Survey, 1994, Report to East Yorks Borough Council
Bastow, M E, Ancient Monuments Record Form, AM107, (1987)
Information held by Humberside SMR, Various, (1994)
Scheduled Ancient Monuments Record, (1988)
AM7,

End of official list entry

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