Bank and ditch

Preliminary

This is a provisional report about a future proposition for specific tags for the following types of banks and ditches:

• bank and ditch barrier
• hedge and ditch barrier
• fossé bordier
• talus
• old way (e.g. Tiense Groef)

About bank and ditch



Bank and ditch or hedge and ditch are man made earthworks in the landscape. All have a historic interest as being the landmark for present and past administrative boundaries. They were used to limit lands, parish, communes, forests, etc.

Images:


They are not designed for drainage even if water can flow in the ditch. 


They can be found under various names :

• in English: ditch, bank, bank and ditch, hedge and ditch, dry ditch, earth bank, ditch earthworks, levee, ha-ha
• in French: fossé, talus, talus-fossé, berme, bourrelet de terre, levée, levée de terre, saut de loup, ha-ha hâ-hâ
• in Dutch: landweer, Ha-Ha, Aha
• in German: Ha-Ha, Aha


Usually, the ditch and the bank are parallel. Occasionally, it can happen there is one ditch and two banks on either sides, a single bank and a ditch on either sides.

Hillshade LiDAR-derived imagery gives an good opportunity to observe their tracks.

They have been studied in various articles:

• Boundaries in the Landscape – Banks, Ditches and Walls, See 1
• 
Section of an early medieval boundary ditch known as the Nico Ditch on Denton golf course 320 m south west of Lodge Farm. See 2
• Banks and Ditches on the Northern Malvern Hills. See 3
• Pits, Platforms, Banks and Ditches. See 4

My suggestion is to tag them as follows:

barrier=ditch
ditch:type=bank_and_ditch
historic=yes

On 2 March 2026, we have approximately 470 sections recorded as ways in OSM for the Belgian Luxembourg province. The overpass turbo query is: https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/2lql

For similar features, we have presently (2 March 2026) the following tags:

• barrier=ditch

  A man-made ditch or a trench is a long and narrow man-made barrier dug in the ground to prevent access to the other side. No precision about the type of the ditch. 82 872 occurrences

• military=trench

  Is used to map a military trench: an excavation in the ground that is generally deeper than it is wide, dug into the ground as a barrier for military purposes (e.g. trench warfare). 26 228 occurrences

• natural=earth_bank

  Not a man-made feature. 21 333 occurrences.

• natural=valley

  Not a man_made feature. 61 499 occurrences.

• natural=cliff

  Not a man_made feature. 972 420 occurrences.

• waterway=ditch

  A simple narrow artificial waterway used to drain nearby land, to remove storm-water or similar. 4 569 900 occurrences.

• waterway=drain

  Artificial waterways, typically lined with concrete or similar, used to carry superfluous water like storm water or grey-discharge. 1 847 859 occurrences.

• man_made=embankment

  Is used to map an artificial slope or steep incline built for example to provide a level platform on top for a road or railway line or to otherwise shape or stabilize the terrain. For micro-mapped embankments, it is not possible to specify the dimensions (height, width). 328 345 occurrences.

• embankment=yes

  Add this tag to a way that is already tagged with a highway=, railway= or waterway=* tag. 285 329 occurrences.

None of them seem to exactly concern the banks and ditches mentioned above.

Other ditches and barriers with no specific tag in OSM (on October 2025)

Hedge and ditch

[tbd]

Canal d’abissage

Used for an artificial waterway designed as a watercourse in a ditch created for this purpose, a ditch called ri d’abissage or ry d’abissage or fossé d’abissage or bief d’abissage depending on the region, in order to bring it upstream of the meadows to be irrigated. See 6.

Fossé bordier

Fossé qui délimite d’anciennes parcelles exploitées de manière discontinue depuis au moins deux millénaires en Narbonnaise. Sa présence marque la trace sur le sol de l’appropriation d’un terroir et d’anciennes mises en culture. Ditch which delimits former plots of land which have been exploited discontinuously for at least two millennia in the Narbonnaise region. Its presence marks the trace on the soil of the appropriation of a terroir and old cultivation.

Talus

[tbd]

Talus plantés

Are one of the identity elements of the clos-masure. Fencing off the plot of land which includes all the buildings, the high jet trees are planted on land levees 1.5 to 2.5 m wide and 0.6 m to 1.30 m high. In Normandy. See 7

Limites de centuriations

Centuriation (in Latin centuriatio or, more usually, limitatio, also known as Roman grid, was a method of land measurement used by the Romans. In many cases land divisions based on the survey formed a field system, often referred to in modern times by the same name. It may appear in the form of roads, canals and agricultural plots. Maybe not of interest presently on OSM!

[text to be clarified and completed]