The Raw Dykes is a substantial earthwork on the southern outskirts of Roman Leicester (Ratae Corieltauvorum), comprising a linear channel some 100 m long flanked by parallel banks, with the cutting reaching around 8 m wide and 2 m deep. It is widely interpreted as a surviving stretch of a leat or open aqueduct channel intended to bring water from the River Soar northwards into the Roman town, probably constructed in the 2nd century AD to supply public buildings such as the forum and the Jewry Wall bath-house complex.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
As one of the very few visible Roman aqueduct earthworks surviving in Britain, it provides rare physical evidence for the hydraulic engineering invested in a civitas capital, demonstrating that Ratae received the kind of monumental water infrastructure more commonly associated with continental Roman cities.
Excavations by Kathleen Kenyon in 1939 and later work by Wacher in the 1960s confirmed the Roman date and revealed the channel's profile, though debate persists over whether the gradient could actually have delivered water to the town's higher ground, leading some to suggest it functioned instead as a header tank, reservoir or unfinished scheme.
The Raw Dykes is a substantial earthwork on the southern outskirts of Roman Leicester (Ratae Corieltauvorum), comprising a linear channel some 100 m long flanked by parallel banks, with the cutting reaching around 8 m wide and 2 m deep. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a aqueduct site from the Roman period in Britain.
The Raw Dykes Roman aqueduct is classified as a Roman aqueduct — a infrastructure site in the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer. Roman Britain's archaeology encompasses thousands of sites ranging from legionary fortresses and marching camps to villas, temples and towns.
Several Roman sites lie within a short distance, including Norfolk Street (1.8 km), Ratae (1.9 km), Jewry Wall (1.9 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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