Fleam Dyke

At Mutlow Hill the dyke runs beside a Bronze Age barrow dated to 2000 BC, which contained eight urns with cremated human remains, and which was reused in the Roman period as a shrine. The finding of a fourth-century Roman coin under the dyke established the dyke's post-Roman construction date. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Anglo-Saxon weapons and burials were found. An excavation in 1991, on occasion of widening the A11 road, established by radiocarbon dating that it had been built in several phases, the first between AD 330 and 510, and the last between AD 450 and 620. It is believed most likely to have been built by early Anglo-Saxon settlers in the fifth century AD as a…

The dyke is located near Cambridge, between Fulbourn and Balsham. It forms a barrier across an open chalkland ridge, bounded near Fulbourn by marshy fenland and near Balsham by 90-metre-high formerly wooded hills ("The Ambush"). It is three miles long and seven metres high from ditch to bank, and its ditch faces southwest. Most of the earthwork survives and a footpath leads along the crest of the bank (now part of the modern Harcamlow Way long-distance footpath). Possible extensions to Fleam Dyke occur at both the south and north ends, and a further part of it might exist three miles to the northwest, from Quy Fen to the River Cam at Fen Ditton.