Wade's Causeway
Wade's Causeway, c. 2005
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 Shown within North Yorkshire
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| Alternate name | Wheeldale Roman Road; Goathland Roman Road; Auld Wife's Trod; The Skivick |
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| Location | Egton Parish, North Yorkshire, England |
| Coordinates | 54°22′14″N 0°45′33″W / 54.370575°N 0.759134°WCoordinates: 54°22′14″N 0°45′33″W / 54.370575°N 0.759134°W |
| Type | linear monument, possibly road or dike |
| Length | between 1.2 and 25 miles (1.9 and 40.2 km) |
| History | |
| Builder | [disputed] |
| Material | sandstone |
| Founded | [uncertain] |
| Abandoned | [uncertain] |
| Periods | Variously contended to be Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Roman or Medieval |
| Site notes | |
| Excavation dates | 1912–1964 (not continuous) |
| Archaeologists | James Patterson, Oxley Grabham, Tempest Anderson, James Rutter, Raymond Hayes, J Ingram, A Precious, P Cook |
| Condition | ruined, overgrown, heavily robbed |
| Ownership | Duchy of Lancaster |
| Management | North York Moors National Park Authority, in cooperation with English Heritage |
| Public access | Yes |
| Reference no. | 1004876 |
| UID | NY 309 |
| National Grid Reference | SE 80680 97870 |
Wade's Causeway is a sinuous, linear monument up to 6,000 years old in the North York Moors national park in North Yorkshire, England. The name may refer to either scheduled ancient monument number 1004876—a length of stone course just over 1 mile (1.6 km) long on Wheeldale Moor, or to a postulated extension of this structure, incorporating ancient monuments numbers 1004108 and 1004104 extending to the north and south for up to 25 miles (40 km). The visible course on Wheeldale Moor consists of an embankment of soil, peat, gravel and loose pebbles 0.7 metres (2.3 ft) in height and 4 to 7 metres (13 to 23 ft) in width. The gently cambered embankment is capped with unmortared and loosely abutted flagstones. Its original form is uncertain since it has been subjected to weathering and human damage.
The structure has been the subject of folklore in the surrounding area for several hundred years and possibly more than a millennium. Its construction was commonly attributed to a giant known as Wade, a figure from Germanic or Norse mythology. In the 1720s the causeway was mentioned in a published text and became known outside the local area. Within a few years it became of interest to antiquarians who visited the site and exchanged commentary on its probable historicity. They interpreted the structure as a causeway across marshy ground, attributing its construction to the Roman military, an explanation largely unchallenged throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The stretch of causeway on Wheeldale Moor was cleared of vegetation and excavated in the early twentieth century by a local gamekeeper with an interest in archaeology. Historian Ivan Margary agreed with its identification as a Roman road, and assigned it the catalogue number 81b in the first edition of his Roman Roads In Britain (1957). The causeway was further excavated and studied by archaeologist Raymond Hayes in the 1950s and 1960s, partially funded by the Council for British Archaeology. The results of his investigation, which concluded that the structure was a Roman road, were published in 1964 by the Scarborough Archaeological and Historical Society.
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