I want to celebrate and review the brand-new heritage interpretation panel on the line of Offa’s Dyke south of Bronygarth in Shropshire.

For context, I’ve already reviewed images of Offa’s Dyke via an earlier blog-post here in which I explored the range of existing representations of Offa’s Dyke both in the landscape and in publications or online. I also set out recommendations for the future.

More recently, thanks to Professor Keith Ray’s ‘Offa’s Dyke: Encounters and Explanations’ project, I became aware of the new heritage interpretation panel at Bronygarth on the southern slopes of the Ceiriog Valley. I mention it here.

I visited today for myself and I’m now able to discuss the new board north of the Eris stream and south of the Afon Ceiriog.

This is a replacement of an earlier board that mentioned Offa’s Dyke in relation to the broader history of the Ceiriog valley including the Battle of Crogen and Chirk Castle. Here it is from 2015. This is on the Offa’s Dyke Path but the location was selected because it is where the national trail intersects with the Ceiriog Trail.

The location is therefore fixed by the precedent of this existing board, which faces north to protect it from direct sunlight. This means that it is positioned so that the viewer stands looking up at the bank-and-ditch of Offa’s Dyke rising uphill southwards and with their back to the Ceiriog valley.

The new board matches this location, and here we encounter the first principal issue. The three sites featured – Offa’s Dyke, the historical location of the Battle of Crogen, and Chirk Castle – are not only behind the reader/viewer, but also one needs to walk c. 15m eastwards along the Ceiriog Trail past the Dyke to gain a viewshed over Chirk Castle and appreciate the landscape discussed on the panel. In other words, the inevitable limitation of the placement is that the image showing a vista of the monument on the new panel cannot be seen from the heritage board itself, although it can be viewed close by.

Now let us turn to the content of the panel. This is a bilingual, smart, well-designed and vividly coloured composition. It is numbered ‘2’ as it is part of the longer trail.

At the base is a map marking the locations of all 9 of the boards.

It is commendable that the funders are explicitly mentioned: the ‘Glynraian and Llansantffraid Glyn Ceiriog Community Councils’ as well as ‘individuals’ and ‘supported by Chirk Castle National Trust’.

The design and text is properly credited as by Sylvia Jones with Welsh translation by Elin Llwyd-Morgan. Sylvia has contributed to other signs in the valley.

The main text is short, succinct and clear. The title announces Offa’s Dyke as an 8th-century ‘barrier’ serving as both an obstacle to raiding and a ‘land grab’ by the ‘dominant lord of the anglo-saxon [sic.] kingdoms, Offa of Mercia’. This might be considered a tad misleading and ambiguous, but for a brief text it makes a simple and evocative argument that the Dyke was both a military and territorial construction linked to the hegemony of King Offa over his rivals.

The acquisition of post-Roman lowland Powys is explained and the long-term and fluctuating conflicts and competition between Powys and rivals Gwynedd and Mercia is articulated. This is a rare and welcome addition when texts for Offa’s Dyke often focus on it as an isolated ‘deed’ – an edifice of Offa.

The Battle of Crogen (1165) is juxtaposed with Edward I’s invasion (1282) and the construction of Chirk Castle. Again, this is a nice way of explaining the complex ties and pressures upon the kingdom of Powys and the March as it was evolving between the 12th and 14th centuries.

As a short statement that puts the Dyke into a broader context of conflict within an evolving frontier zone this works very well. In all these regards, the panel tells a brief and compelling story.

The map places the polities mentioned on the map, although sadly no detail is afforded as to where Mercia is precisely located and no other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms are featured for context (although this is common for most discussions of the Anglo-Welsh borderland. Offa is prominently evoked through a rendition of the coin portrait of the king (although this image isn’t explained, it is so widely deployed and at least it isn’t some fantasy portrayal of the ruler as so often features elsewhere).

The map showing the Offa’s Dyke Path and more local element of the Ceiriog Trail vividly contextualise the viewer/walker. A photograph of Chirk Castle supports the narrative in both text and the stylised vista.

Most prominent of all of the panel elements is a simplified perspective over the valley looking north, showing the Dyke heading down to the Ceiriog and then up past Chirk Castle. This helps the walker to appreciate the placement of the monument in traversing the topography.

The cross-section through the bank and ditch, showing a small counterscarp bank, also helps to explain the composition of the monument.

A difficulty here is the Dyke is shown already denuded monument – it is a somewhat flattened present-day landscape albeit one stripped of tree cover. As a result, there are no attempts to hint at the likely range of installations – palisade or fence, lookout towers, gates, tracks etc – that might have been integral to the linear earthwork. Still, such reconstructions often bring in a host of speculative elements, so perhaps this is for the best. Also, the scale and shape of the bank, the relatively small size of the ditch and its U-shape are all rather inaccurate in terms of its original construction, even if they clearly explain that the monument is comprised of multiple components.

A final point of commendation is the clear and explicit recognition that the 1536 Wales/England border is not the same as Offa’s Dyke: this is an enduring point of confusion.

Only a third criticism must be mentioned – this is a great location for walkers, but it is relatively isolated and away from any major road or heritage destinations in the Ceiriog Valley. Hence, relatively few people will get to see this panel whereas other locations which attract tourists have little or no effective heritage interpretation (including, as I keep mentioning, Chirk Castle).

Putting all these positive points together – aside from my 3 concerns regarding (a) the morphology of the monument, (b) the relationship between the south-facing orientation and placing of the board, and utilising a pre-existing structure versus the north-facing vista is depicts, and (c) the isolated out-of-the-way location – I feel this is an excellent new addition to the interpretation of Offa’s Dyke Path.