Devil
The Devil's Ditch
Thrown out of a wedding, he ploughed the land with his tail.
See it clearly
- What's there
- Massive bank and ditch walkable for seven miles
- Legend from
- Post-medieval tradition
- Tone
- Light-hearted
Here at Reach begins a seven-mile ditch, and the story goes the Devil dug it with his tail after being thrown out of a wedding.
Devil's Dyke is a huge bank and ditch running more than seven miles from Reach to Woodditton, built by the Anglo-Saxons around the fifth or sixth century. In the Middle Ages it was called St Edmund's Dyke or the Great Ditch, but later country people felt no human hands could have made it. One local story says the Devil turned up uninvited to a wedding at Reach church and was chased away by the guests. In his fury he fled, and his blazing tail gouged out the long groove of the dyke. Michael Drayton's Poly-Olbion already complained of the devilish name in 1622.