Raw Dykes

Raw Dykes is a Roman earthwork and scheduled monument in Leicester [1]. The monument consists of two parallel banks up to 20 metres apart, with an excavated channel running between them [1]. A stretch 110 metres long survives, but originally the earthwork was at least 550 metres in length [1]. The first written reference to the earthwork occurs in the borough of Leicester's accounts from 1322 [1]. During the English Civil War, Royalist soldiers used part of the earthwork as an artillery emplacement; it also appears on several 18th- and 19th-century maps [1]. Since the early modern period its length has been greatly shortened by the expansion of Leicester [1].