Gnarly trees grow on the bank of Bishop's Dyke, a medieval bank and ditch covering 4.5 miles and enclosing 500 acres of, what today is, very boggy ground. Legend has it that earthwork marks a packet of land held by John de Pontoise, Bishop of Winchester in 1284, which he acquired after Edward 1st told him he could enclose any land that he could crawl around in a day; whether that's true or not is uncertain, other suggestions are that it was a 13th century deer park or cattle farm; both would require the ground to be far less sodden than it is today...surely.
No comments:
Post a Comment