Herefordshire Through Time
Herefordshire Through Time
During the Roman occupation of Britain the Marches area had been a boundary zone with the unconquered Welsh on the western side and the Romanised Britons on the east. After the Romans left, Wales was split into four main kingdoms: Gwynedd, Powys, Dyfed and Gwent. The Welsh were a strong and determined race and were known for their fierce reactions to attempts to rule them, hence the trouble the Romans had in their attempt to conquer them.
In the 8th century, the kingdoms of south-east Wales came under pressure from the Saxons who were looking to extend their lands and subdue any raids into their territory by the Welsh. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for AD 743 records that Æthelbald of Mercia and Cuthred of Wessex fought the Welsh, the Llandaff Charter for c. 745 mentions destruction in the Hereford area by the Welsh, and in 760 the Welsh Annals record that Hereford was devastated by Welsh raiding parties. In 777 King Offa retaliated and harassed the Welsh, and in 783 he was involved in further attacks against the Welsh Britons.
King Offa ruled the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia between 757 and 795, and was a renowned and powerful leader. He was also known as the Emperor of southern Britain and he ruled much of Anglo-Saxon England. On many of his charters (official land documents) he is recorded as "king of all the English". Offa was married to Cynethryth (later implicated in the murder of Ethelbert, King of East Anglia) and they had one son - Egfrith - and four daughters - Eadburh, Ælfled, Ælfthryth and Ethelburga. Ælfthryth and Ethelburga both became abbesses and the other two daughters married the Kings of Wessex and Northumbria.
In 787 Offa had his son Egfrith crowned during his own reign. This was most probably to secure the succession and to quell any other claimants that might come forward on Offa's death. As it turned out, Egfrith outlived his father by only 141 days. Offa himself had been involved in a struggle for the throne of Mercia. When Æthelbald, the previous king, was murdered by his own bodyguard a civil war ensued, with Offa and Beornred fighting for the throne. Offa was the victor.
During this period of civil war Mercia lost control of some of her client kingdoms, and her western border was also pushed back eastwards by the inhabitants of Powys, who took advantage of the unrest to regain some of the territory they had lost earlier to the Mercians. At this time Powys was under the rule of Eliseg.
Once Offa was firmly in control of Mercia it is likely that he had the dyke built to be a permanent demarcation of the boundary between the Welsh and his kingdom. It is believed that the events that led to Offa building the dyke are recorded on the Pillar of Eliseg near Llangollen. The inscription is now almost worn away, but fortunately it was recorded in 1696 by Edward Llhuyd. It reads:"Concenn being great-grandson of Eliseg erected this stone to his great-grandfather Eliseg. It was Eliseg who annexed [the inheritance of Powys] throughout nine [years?] from the power of the English, which he made into a sword-land by fire [or partly by the sword and fire]" (David Hill, "Offa Versus the Welsh", in British Archaeology, 2000, pp. 20-1).
The first mention of Offa's Dyke occurs in Asser's Life of King Alfred, written in 893, nearly 100 years after the dyke's construction is thought to have been begun: "There was in Mercia in fairly recent times a certain vigorous king called Offa, who terrified all the neighbouring kings and provinces around him, and who had a great dyke built between Wales and Mercia from sea to sea".
In total, from coast to coast, Offa's Dyke covers a distance of around 80 miles.
The main section of the dyke runs north from Kington (in north-west Herefordshire), and consists of a bank with a ditch on its western side. Originally the ditch was about 2m from ground level, while the bank towered nearly 8m above the ditch bottom in places. The size of the dyke and the quality of its construction can vary along its length, depending on the type of soil and the terrain.
The bank of the dyke is made from the soil removed during the cutting of the ditch. The bank is often strengthened internally with stone and turfs cut from along the line of the ditch and also from behind the bank.
For much of the length of the dyke the ditch has since been filled in, but when excavated it would appear to have been V-shaped with a smooth 45º angle up the side of the ditch that carried on up the side of the bank. This would have made climbing over the dyke extremely difficult.
On the western side of the ditch there is often a small counterscarp bank, also made from the material removed for the ditch. It is thought that the purpose of this feature was to increase the overall impression of the depth of the ditch. The width of the dyke, including the ditch and the bank, can be as wide as 20m in places. On top of the bank there is no evidence of either a wall or guard stations, so it would appear that the dyke was not manned but rather was designed to be an obstacle and deterrent on its own.
At its southern end Offa's Dyke seems to disappear into the sea, ending as it does on Sedbury Cliffs, overlooking the mouth of the River Severn. On cliff tops overlooking Chepstow is an eroded ringwork, about 40m wide, which has been interpreted as a Mercian fort by both Cyril Fox and David Hill of the Offa's Dyke Project.
[Original author: Miranda Greene, 2005]