REACH - Kelly's Directory 1851

Reach or Reche is a small hamlet partly in this, and partly in Burwell parish, situated about li- mile north of Swaffham. Its population in 1841 was 416 souls, 301 of which are included with this parish. Reach was formerly a market town, and before the draining of the feus, ships of considerable burden are said to have come up here. A large fair for horses, &c., is held here on Rogation Monday, the tolls of which belong to the corporation of Cambridge. Part of the end wall with a window of what appears to have been a church or chapel still stands in the village.

Devil's Ditch, Fleam Dyke, &c. Here also, on the west bank of the river Cam, on which, the village is situated, terminates the greatest of those ditches or fortifications with which the eastern part of Cambridgeshire is intersected. The most remarkable, of these extensive banks or ridges, is called the Devil's Ditch or Dyke, the etymology of which appellation may be accounted for in the name of Davilier, who held the manor of Broome in Suffolk by the service of being conductor of the footmen or infantry of that county and Norfolk, who were bound to serve the king in his Welsh wars, and had their rendezvous always in that ditch. This celebrated ditch commences near Cattedge and runs across. Newmarket heath in a straight line for seven miles to Reach, and it is no where so perfect as for the space of about a mile from this place. The slope measures from 26 to 52 feet, and the width of the works is 100 feet. The earth that was dug out of the trench was thrown up, and forms a high bank on tlie cast side, which is that next the sea. This mode of disposing of the excavated earth is, in the opinion of Dr. Stukeley, a proof that the ditch was made some centuries before Caesar, by the first inhabitants that settled eastward, in order to secure themselves from. the attacks of the inland aborigines. Its antiquity is inferred from several ways having been cut through the bank and the ditch filled up.- These passages are mostly called gaps. In Dr. Mason's manuscripts, quoted by Mr. Gough, it is remarked that "the situation of this (the Devil's ditch) is so well chosen, that being only seven miles long. it could secure Norfolk and Suffolk from midland invasions, the fen securing all between that and Lynn; and if there was a continuation of wood from Ditton to the Thames, as we have some accounts of its having been in later ages, it would cover Essex also. Other antiquarians are of opinion that it was constructed for the security of the Iccni by the Romans their allies, before the country westward had been subjected to the Roman yoke, and that it might long afterwards have been occupied as a defensive position by the East Angles against the Mercians. Its greatness proves it to be the work only of a whole province, especially as there was for greater security a second parallel to it seven miles distant, not so big but longer beginning at Fen-Ditton and ending at Balsham, about 12 miles. This ditch called Fleam Dyke, from Flema a Saxon word implying flight or refuge, is a military line of entrenchment similar to the Devil's ditch. A considerable part of it has been levelled, but it still remains very entire between Great Wilbrabam, and Balsham. One argument of the antiquity of Fleam dyke,, says Dr. Mason, is, "that many ways have been cut through it and the ditch filled up, yet such is the nature of the soil, being chalk almost to the surface, that it drinks in all the rain that falls, and no water is ever seen in it nor upon any part of the heath. There is a third ditch about a mile south of Bourn bridge, lying upon declining ground between Abingdon wood and Pampisforth, fronting towards Cambridge," says the same learned writer; "towards the middle it has been filled up for the Ikeneld (Roman way) to pass over it, which shews it to be older than that road; it is very large and deep, but has no bank on cither side; this ditch, like the two others, extends from. the woods to the flat, soft land." Brant or Brent ditch is a slighter work of this kind, " which proceeds from Haydon in Essex, pointing nearly to Barrington, continuing over part of Foulmire field, till it ends in a piece of boggy ground."

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