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 Danes' Dyke from the B1229 north to Wold Farm field boundary

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

Overview

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1013193
Date first listed:: 29-Aug-1922

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:: 1013193
Date first listed:: 29-Aug-1922
Date of most recent amendment:: 28-Aug-1995

Location

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

District:: East Riding of Yorkshire (Unitary Authority)
Parish:: Bempton
District:: East Riding of Yorkshire (Unitary Authority)
Parish:: Flamborough
National Grid Reference:: TA 21251 71395

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 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 dyke extends from the northern side of the B1259 road and to an eastward projecting bend in the earthwork, linked to a field boundary and aligned on Wold Farm.

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. To the north of the B1229, the dyke continues nearly straight, although bending slightly west, then back northward. The bank is around 3m high, and the ditch over 2m deep and wet in parts.

There are three gaps in the bank of uncertain origin, although probably made to facilitate passage at periods subsequent to the construction of the earthwork. The central gap has a slight eastward directioned turn to the bank, paralleled by the ditch, and may be original. The gap at the northernmost point of this section, where the Wold Farm field boundary aligns on the more pronounced eastward bend of the dyke, has a second bank on the west side of the ditch and is thought to be a later reconstruction of the defences during antiquity.

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.

Modern post and wire fences dividing the dyke from agricultural land bounding it to the east and the west are excluded from the scheduling, although 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:: 26508
Legacy System:: RSM

Sources

Books and journals
The Victoria History of the County of East Riding of Yorkshire, (1974), 151-152
Mortimer, J R , Forty Years Researches in British and Saxon Burial Mounds of East Yorkshire, (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
AM7,
Bastow, M E, Ancient Monuments Record Form, AM107, (1987)
Information held by Humberside SMR, Various, (1994)
Scheduled Ancient Monuments Record, (1988)

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.