What exactly is Grim’s Ditch? On my journey I encountered many sections of this feature from the start at Ingatestone Hill all the way through to the Berkshire Downs and even some sections not identified on the OS maps, I believe. That’s over 60 miles where the local population identified a specific feature as having some kind of common origin. I believe that it is a remnant of the ancient track, incised into the stone by thousands of years of travel — the actual line of the Ridgeway. Of course in many areas it has been realigned, repurposed or obliterated: and was perhaps one of a number of parallel routes. But is there a tantalising hint in the name itself that it was indeed a pilgrimage route to the Stonehenge midwinter festival?
What was it for?
Physically Grim’s Ditch (aka Grim’s Dyke or Bank) is an indentation or hollow way in the natural ground surface at or near the top of the chalk ridge that the Ridgeway follows, generally no more than 6m wide. Where it is cut into a slope it can be 3 to 4m deep on the upper side and 1 to 2m on the lower side.
It is clearly not a defensive feature. Comparing its profile to that of some of the enclosures along the route (below), the scale is tiny and would not have provided any protection over a length of many miles.
It has also been proposed as a boundary feature. But one problem with that is that to create such a feature by digging, as with the iron age forts above, you would create a ditch and a bank from the excavated spoil. Grim’s Ditch is almost always a negative feature only with no sign of a resultant bank. It seems obvious to me that it is an erosion feature similar to hollow ways, created by the passage of traffic churning up the mud in wet weather, which is then washed out, gradually increasing the size of the indentation year by year.
On the high stone roads, this erosion, slowly dissolving the chalk, would have been much slower than the hollow ways created on clay, but also once made, would remain clearly visible and a good route to follow. In some places as at Chilton Downs, there are several parallel routes on the lee of the scarp slope.
The section between Nuffield and Wallingford illustrates that this was partly a constructed route. Descending from the Downs at Nuffield, the ditch at first is on the flank of a hill to the right, then further down a hill to the left, before reaching the flood plain where it is actually a raised causeway, to reach the ford at Wallingford where it would have been possible to continue by boat to Streatley. This could have been a later adaptation that would cut out a loop along the scarp line over Ipsden Heath via Woodcote to Goring.
Intriguingly, on Pewsey Downs, the linear features above look very similar to other sections of Grim’s Ditch, but is identified on maps as Workway Drove. It is on the flank of Knap Hill, which is topped by a Neolithic camp. This is the probable route that sarsen stones were taken on for Stonehenge phase 2, from the sarsen fields east of Avebury to the Vale of Pewsey and the River Avon.
Origin of the name
There are various theories on the origin of the name Grim. Perhaps the most popular is that it is from a nickname, Grim, for Woden. When the Anglo Saxons arrived, they tended to name anything that couldn’t be explained Grim, believing it to be supernatural in origin. In the same way, the Wansdyke, another linear earthwork, is believed to be named after Woden.
However, my favourite theory is that it is derived from the Celtic name Grin or Grian. In Irish mythology, Grian (literally, “sun”) is believed to be a manifestation of Áine, the goddess of summer and midsummer rites. According to the Dictionary of Celtic Mythology by James McKillop (1998) It is thought possible that Áine and Grian may share a dual-goddess, seasonal function (such as seen in the Gaelic myths of the Cailleach and Brigid) with the two sisters representing the “two suns” of the year: Áine representing the light half of the year and the bright summer sun (an ghrian mhór), and Grian the dark half of the year and the pale winter sun (an ghrian bheag).
While it is may be fanciful to imagine the name has survived 4500 years, one theory of languages is that the Beaker culture spoke a language identified as proto-Italic-Celtic. Names of gods and major features like rivers are known to be particularly long lived.
