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A section of Offa's Dyke at Discoed, Powys
A map showing the location of Offa's Dyke
Offa's Dyke is an amazing 1200 year old linear earthwork which runs through the English/Welsh borders from Treuddyn (near Wrexham in north east Wales) to Sedbury Cliffs (on the Severn estuary, in southern Gloucestershire).
The Dyke consists of an earthen bank which can be up to 8 metres high, associated with a ditch to the west, and typically occupies an imposing position in the landscape with fine and commanding views into Wales.
It is not known exactly what the Dyke looked like when first built, but archaeological excavation suggests the western side of the bank was revetted with turf to create a near vertical face, and it is possible that some kind of palisade or wall also existed on top of the earthwork.
Offa's Dyke, is the most impressive monument of its kind anywhere in Europe, and a construction project of comparable landscape scale was not again to be undertaken for 1000 years until the great canal schemes of the 18th century.
It is one of the great engineering achievements of the pre-industrial age and the most dramatic built structure to survive from Anglo-Saxon times - as such it is crucial evidence of a key phase in British history which has generally left relatively few substantial visible remains.
The 'Offa' of Offa's Dyke was King of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Mercia from 757-796 AD.
Mercia, centred on what is today the English Midlands, was one of a number of independent Kingdoms which had emerged in the mid/later first millennium AD from the gradual extension of Anglo-Saxon political control across much of former Roman Britain.
Through military campaigns and political alliance, Offa established Mercian control over the majority of what we now call England.
Although very little direct historical documentation relating to Offa has survived, we can still glimpse a powerful leader and astute politician who was treated as an equal by Charlegmagne, the greatest European ruler of the age!
Even today when you visit the Dyke, you are immediately struck by the sheer magnitude of the undertaking, as indeed I did, when a family outing many many years ago resulted in me falling from a rope ‘swing’ right into the river below lol I was ‘drenched’ . . . lol
You really have to walk along the Dyke to get an idea of what an extraordinary monument it is. First of all there is the size of the earthwork and a sense of the enormity of building the massive bank and digging the ditch with only hand tools.
Then, there is an appreciation of the engineering and planning skill with which the Dyke fits into the landscape whether skirting the Wye Valley in Gloucestershire, exploiting the contours, ridges and slopes of the Clun area in Shropshire, or marching purposefully across the lowlands east of Montgomery.
Finally, you get to thinking about the organisation and logistics behind a construction project like this and the political control and sophisticated administrative systems which must have underlain it.
And all this from a time which used to be referred to as the 'Dark Ages' !!!
