The Town Dyke - which this walk traces - may have been meant to have a wall on top of the earthwork, but this was never built. The total length of the dyke is 950 yards, and the area enclosed c. 40 acres.

2. If you go to the top of the mound (or motte) on your left, you can see the remains of the shell-keep and the well. The mound is entirely artificial, the earth being taken up in baskets from the moat.

3. The house to R of the castle gate (now council offices) was built 1790-1800, using stone from the castle. Pass through the gatehouse, described in 1520 as being ‘as strong a fortress as few be in England’. Note the arrow slits, boiling oil chutes, and portcullis grooves; the moat outside was probably filled in when the house was built. The gatehouse is open to the public, and is well presented.

4. Go straight across the former Barbican area into Castle Street, then L to pass the old Fire Station. The large red brick building ahead (Bank House) was the eariy 18th cent. poor house, converted to a school in 1836, and now offices. Tum L down The Slade.

5. Take the first road L beside the school, cross the bridge: observe model railway and Town Swimming Bath on L, but go immediately R for c.40 yards along the footpath by the stream. The beginning of the Town Dyke is visible as a reinforced bank across the stream beside the red brick offices. Retrace steps bearing L round the Slade School; immediately cross to....

6. ...a short footpath bearing R, running alongside an overgrown sectlon of the Dyke, devastated by the great storm of 1987, which is scheduled as an Ancient Monument. Turn L into Fosse (‘dyke’) Road then R again to Lansdowne Road and the High Street. The Dyke approaches through gardens to the Car Park behind the offices on R.

7. Cross the traffic lights into Bordyke. The Ivy House (or Elephant and Castle) on the corner was probably built in the ditch when the fortification was no longer needed, and it served as a port-reeve’s house to regulate the market tolls. On L No.5 Bordyke is converted from the laboratory where Sir Humphrey Davy (inventor of the miners’ safety lamp) worked until c. 1810. The Priory on L is Tudor, and was once the home of Thomas Weller, a leading local parliamentarian in the Civil War. The Dyke ran inside the present Churchyard wall on R and was a duckpond until 1821 when the churchyard was extended (hence lack of graves on that

8. Follow path to R at end of churchyard wall. The Dyke forms a feature in the gardens of the large house on L (The Cedars) and its neighbour, the Hermitage in East Street. Turn L in churchyard into Church Street (almshouses on R) then L into East Skeet.

9. The Portreeve’s House opposite was once concerned with market tolls: the Dyke passes through its garden. The building on L standing back from the road, after the modern flats, is in the ditch, marked on 1 9th cent. maps as a willow bed. Turn R down Lyons Crescent.

10. At the side of ‘The Gables (town houses), you can see the Dyke on the boundary with ‘Lyons’ garden, and also the bas~on where the Dyke turns parallel with the river. There is a steep bank behind all the houses from The Gables’ almost to the High Street, showing the line of the Dyke, and possibly the line of the old river bank. The last part of the route of the Dyke approaching the bridge and the Castle is uncertain.