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. Etymology The earliest documented reference to the ditch is in a charter detailing the granting of land in Audenshaw to the monks of the Kersal Cell. In the document, dating from 1190 to 1212, the ditch is referred to as "Mykelldiche", and a magnum fossatum, which is Latin for "large ditch". The name Nico (sometimes Nikker) for the ditch became established in the 19th and 20th century. It may have been derived from the Anglo-Saxon Hnickar, 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". Course Nico Ditch stretches between Ashton Moss () in Ashton-under-Lyne and Hough Moss (), which is just east of Stretford. It passes through Denton, Reddish, Gorton, Levenshulme, Burnage, Rusholme, Platt Fields Park in Fallowfield, Withington and Chorlton-cum-Hardy, crossing four metropolitan boroughs of present-day Greater Manchester. The ditch coincides with the boundaries between the boroughs of Stockport and Manchester, and between Tameside and Manchester; it reaches as far as the Denton golf course. A section is now beneath the Audenshaw Reservoirs, which were built towards the end of the 19th century. The ditch may have extended west beyond Stretford, to Urmston (). History The earthwork was constructed some time between the end of Roman rule in Britain in the early 5th century and the Norman conquest in 1066. Its original purpose is unclear, but it may have been used as a defensive fortification or as an administrative boundary. It possibly marked a 7th-century boundary for the expansionist Anglo-Saxons, or it may have been a late 8th or early 9th century boundary marker between the kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria. In the early medieval period, the Anglo-Saxon