Raw Dykes

Raw Dykes is a Roman earthwork and scheduled monument in Leicester consisting of two parallel banks up to 20 metres apart with a channel between them. A 110-metre stretch survives of what was originally over 550 metres long. Its purpose remains debated: it may have been an aqueduct supplying water to the Roman town of Ratae Corieltauvorum, or a navigable transport canal. Excavations in 1938 recovered 1st-century AD pottery, and during the English Civil War, Royalist forces used part of the earthwork as an artillery position.