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Offa
of Mercia
Offa's
Dyke on the Herefordshire border north
of Kington
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In
757 Offa became king of Mercia. A contemporary
of Charlemagne, Offa was the leading
king of the English-speaking people
of Britain in the 8th century. Such
was his influence that he persuaded
the Pope that a third archbishop should
be created in Mercia to join those of
York and Canterbury. The see of Hereford
formed part of this new province under
Hygeberht, the Archbishop of Lichfield.
After Offa's death the archbishopric
of Lichfield disappeared. |
Offa
gained a victory over Glywysing in a battle
near the site of modern Hereford in 760, and
a temporary truce was established. King Ithel
ap Morgan had died some time shortly after
745 and the British (or perhaps by this time
we may use the term Welsh) would have been
led by one or more of his sons - Ffernfael,
Rhodri, Rhys and Meurig.
Offa
built the great earthwork now known
as Offa's Dyke on the border between
Mercia and Powys. Although various lengths
of earthworks in Herefordshire and Gloucestershire
are referred to as Offa's Dyke, there
is good evidence to suggest that the
dyke proper terminates around Kington
in north Herefordshire.
Where rivers marked the boundaries with
other kingdoms the maintenance and control
of the crossing points was of importance,
both for trade and in case of war. Offa
seems to have built a causeway and paved
ford at Oxford on his southern border
with Wessex and similar attention was
paid to his border with the East Angles.
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Hereford
Cathedral and Broad Street from the
spire of All Saints church. Beyond the
cathedral is the bishop's palace. The
hill on the horizon is Dinedore, the
site of one of Herefordshire's many
Iron Age hill-forts. |
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St
Ethelbert's Well, Hereford - The spring
which originally flowed from this spot
was said to have sprung forth when the
body of St Ethelbert was laid here on
the way to the cathedral. |
Hereford,
on the Wye border with Glywysing/Gwent,
lies on the north-east to south-west
route between South Wales and the centre
of Mercian power around Tamworth and
Lichfield. It might have been this strategic
position which led to the first non-religious
development at Hereford.
St
Ethelbert
Sutton lies 6km north north-east of
Hereford. Here, on this important route,
Offa built a palace. At Sutton in 794
he is alleged to have murdered Ethelbert,
the young King of the East Angles. Tradition
has Offa atoning for this deed by becoming
a benefactor of the Cathedral at Hereford,
where Ethelbert's body was subsequently
interred.
Miracles were attributed to Ethelbert.
The saint's severed head was said to
have fallen off the cart taking his
body to Hereford. A blind man tripped
over the head and was cured. In Hereford,
a spring suddenly appeared at the place
where his cortege rested before being
taken to the cathedral for burial. Ethelbert
was canonised, and his tomb, in what
became the cathedral church of St Mary
the Virgin and St Ethelbert the King,
became a major centre of pilgrimage.
The tales also recount that up to this
time the English had called the settlement
on the Wye Fernleigh, changing the name
to Hereford afterwards. The English
name for the town means 'Ford of the
army' while its Welsh name, Henffordd,
means 'the Old road'. |
The
Planned Town
Hereford did not just grow. It was laid out
as an undefended town with a grid of streets.
The evidence suggests that this happened in
the second half of the 8th century, that is
in the reign of Offa. Within this planned
town were single storey post-built houses
with earth floors. Each house stood on an
individual, approximately square, plot measuring
about 300 square metres.
Within a generation or two, for some reason,
part of this planned town was sacrificed in
order to build a defensive rampart. This was
the first in a sequence of defences which
were to stamp their own marks on the plan
of the city.
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