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Nico Ditch is a six-mile (9.7 km) long linear earthwork between Ashton-under-Lyne and Stretford in Greater Manchester, England. It was dug as a defensive fortification, or possibly a boundary marker, between the 5th and 11th century. The ditch is still visible in short sections, such as a stretch in Denton Golf Course. For the parts which survived, the ditch is wide and up to deep. Part of the earthwork is protected as a Scheduled Ancient Monument.
The name Nico (sometimes Nikker) for the ditch became established in the 19th and 20th century. It may have been derived from the Old English Nickar, a water spirit who seized and drowned unwary travellers, but the modern name is most likely a corruption of the name Mykelldiche and its variations; this is because the Anglo-Saxon word micel means "big" or "great", harking back to the early 13th century description of the ditch as magnum fossatum. An alternative derivation of Nico comes from nǽcan, an Anglo-Saxon verb meaning "kill".
Legend has it that Nico Ditch was completed in a single night by the inhabitants of Manchester, as a protection against Viking invaders in 869–870; Manchester may have been looting by the Danes in 870.Hylton (2003), p. 8. It was said that each man had an allocated area to construct, and was required to dig his section of the ditch and build a bank equal to his own height. According to 19th-century folklore, the ditch was the site of a battle between Saxons and Danes. The battle was supposed to have given the nearby towns of Gorton and Reddish their names, from "Gore Town" and "Red-Ditch", respectively,Booker (1857), p. 197.Harland & Wilkinson (1993), pp. 26–29. but the idea has been dismissed by historians as a "popular fancy".Farrer & Brownbill (1911), pp. 275–279. The names derive from "dirty farmstead" and "reedy ditch," respectively.
and historians have been interested in the ditch since the 19th century, but much of its course has been built over. Between 1990 and 1997, the University of Manchester Archaeological Unit excavated sections of the ditch in Denton, Reddish, Levenshulme, and Platt Fields, in an attempt to determine its age and purpose. Although no date was established for the ditch's construction, the investigations revealed that the bank to the north of the ditch is of 20th century origin. Together with the ditch's profile, which is U-shaped rather than the V-shape typically used in military ditches and defenses, this suggests that the purpose of the earthwork was to mark a territorial boundary. The conclusion of the project was that the ditch was probably a boundary marker.Nevell (1998), p. 41.
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