THE ORIGINS OF the Car Dyke which runs through Bourne continue to engage the attention of historians and speculation as to whether this unique waterway was built for transport or as a flood defence. Although there have been many learned treatises on the subject no absolute conclusions have been reached.

The waterways of fenland have been used by its inhabitants for centuries, even as far back as the Bronze Age which is usually dated in Europe from 2000 to 500 BC. The early settlers travelled these parts by boat on their expeditions in search of fish and fowl to feed their families and for reeds to thatch their houses and turf to fuel their fires. Their boats were hewn from the trunks of oak trees and many have been found in South Lincolnshire. One of them which was recovered from Deeping Fen was 46 feet long with a maximum beam of 5 ft 8 in and had a ribbed floor and an external keel cut out of the solid wood which demonstrated that these people were no mean sailors.

There is however no evidence that the early inhabitants of the fens used these waterways for anything more than domestic purposes but with the coming of the Romans 2,000 years ago, all this changed and the invaders made a determined effort to improve their lines of communication. Their most ambitious project was the Car Dyke, a watercourse of 75 miles in length, starting at Waterbeach in Cambridgeshire then crossing the River Welland and entering Lincolnshire at Deeping St James. From here, it skirted the western limits of the fens and joined the River Witham at Torksey below Lincoln, and so extended for a distance of 56 miles through Lincolnshire.

Since the 18th century, it has been recognised as an important feature of the ancient landscape, possibly the second longest Roman monument after Hadrian's Wall, yet very little is known about it and it has even been suggested that it might have been a Roman Imperial estate boundary. It was first described as a canal for the trade and transport of goods by one of our earliest historians, Dr William Stukeley (1687-1765), Lincolnshire born antiquary and one of the founders of field archaeology, who wrote that the word càr was Old English with a transport connotation and applied to raft, sledge and vehicles of carriage, which may therefore have given rise to its present meaning in the modern motor car.

It is known that the dyke was traversable, not by sailing ships as may be imagined, but by low barges and rafts drawn by horses or manpower, and was probably used by the Romans to move supplies between East Anglia and the armies in the north, the main cargoes being corn, wool for uniforms, leather for tents and shields and provisions such as salted meat, returning laden with coal and building materials and locally made pottery. In later years, it was probably used for the transport of stone from various quarrying operations in the county, a valuable commodity in the construction of houses and important buildings such as churches, and in 1717, a bell weighing 12 cwt was transported on a raft from Henry Penn's foundry at Peterborough for installation at Lincoln Cathedral, passing through Dyke village, thus indicating that the waterway was still navigable more than 1,500 years after it was built.

Other historians have suggested that the name means nothing more than a fen dyke and the fens in the Ancholme area in the far north of the county were once known a carrs. In fact, Dr Stukeley admitted that car and fen were practically synonymous, a term used in Lincolnshire to signify low unenclosed watery and boggy places and it has since been established that the name is most likely derived from an old Norse personal name, hence Kárr’s dik and subsequently Car Dyke.

However, there is no doubt that the Car Dyke also functioned as a catch-water drain, carrying off the water from the numerous high land brooks and streams from the west and although this strategic planning soon fell into disrepair in the fifth century once the Roman administration ceased, it did begin the long process of draining the fens. This project continued in various stages, through the Middle Ages with the establishment of the Commission of Sewers to oversee the upkeep of embankments and the cleaning of watercourses, the piecemeal improvements of the 16th and 17th centuries, major work during the 19th century, particularly in 1846 when a section of the dyke north of Haconby was scoured out and deepened to improve drainage, and thence into modern times.

This important waterway ran through the Bourne area and a branch canal between Bourne and Morton still exists today but can only be seen from the air when the field crops are at a stage which make its outline visible although it has shown evidence of soak ditches parallel to the canal to take water from the field ditches and discharge it into the canal. The conclusion is therefore that the waterway was built for the primary purpose of transport while the route chosen also meant that it would be useful when flooding was threatened.

Today in most areas, the Car Dyke is difficult to identify except for those who are looking for it because as the fen has been intensively drained since the 17th century, it is indistinguishable from any of the other watercourses which are a feature of this part of England. It can best be seen locally in Manning Road where it crosses underneath the carriageway on its way north and in the villages along the route, notably Dyke, which takes its name from the waterway, and Dunsby Fen where it has a particular prominence, and to the south of the town where it runs alongside the main A15 trunk road and past the village church at Thurlby.

In 1807, it was described as being 60 feet wide in places with a broad, flat bank on either side, but today it is much narrower and even choked with weed in some places but although no longer navigable, still serving a useful function as an integral part of the rural drainage system.