The northernmost firmly attested stretch of Britain’s greater linear ancient monument – Offa’s Dyke – is situated in Flintshire between Treuddyn and Llanfynydd at Coed Talwrn/Coed Talon (Ray and Bapty 2016: 39). Sir Cyril Fox described it as follows:

The Dyke first appears at a point 100 years SE of the Tan-llan colliery tramway, on the margin of the ground disturbed by mine workings; here the Treuddyn-Llanfynydd road, which has hitherto been on the natural ground level, rises on to a bank which is seen to be the flattened crest of the Dyke. This bank is of considerable breadth and height … and its absence father northwards, already recorded, is all the more remarkable.

For a distance of 700 years the road, which throughout this distance descends at an even gradient towards the valley flloor, remains on the crest of the Dyke… The draining of the plateau has been partly reflected into the ditch – here on the SW. side – which has thus been maintained probably at its original depth; the brook leaves the ditch at the E. Boundary of field 4. Throughout this distance, the fields immediately adjacent to the Dyke on the NE. side show a rounded hollow close to its line, as though some of the material required for its construction had been gathered form this side. Its build indeed is here greater than can be accounted for by the size of the western ditch.

Fox 1955: 30

Now I have driven this road a number of times and seen the sign saying ‘Offa’s Dyke’/’Clawdd Offa’ visible for those heading south only, but never before realised how absolutely incomprehensible and ludicrous this brown Cadw road sign is. I was drawn to reflect on this by the Day 19 post by Professor Keith Ray who walked this section as part of his ‘Offa’s Dyke: Encounters and Explanations’ project.

So where is Offa’s Dyke at this location if one doesn’t have a friendly Professor Ray available to point it out? How will visitors know where it is in relation to the sign? Is there any indication that by driving on the road southwards of this point one is atop the Dyke? Certainly, there is no equivalent sign for road-users heading north along the road atop the Dyke!

The broader situation regarding the infrequent, inconsistent and incomprehensible heritage waymarking and interpretation panels for Offa’s Dyke is one of striking and long-term interpretative neglect as well as the usual dearth of funding and divisions caused by the monument traversing many contrasting national and local authorities and land used and owned by many hundreds of individuals, companies and institutions. Indeed, in my walks up and down the monument’s surviving sections, beyond the Offa’s Dyke Centre in Knighton there are only a couple of effective heritage interpretation panels about the monument. Indeed, only the Tidenham car park sign by English Heritage does any effective explanation of the monument with a striking visualisation. The Offa’s Dyke Path’s waymarker-appended panels are fine and help direct perspective, as at near Froncysyllte and Hawthorn Hill, and Keith’s walk has helpfully drawn my attention to a new panel near Bronygarth replacing a long-faded sign.

Now, I’m not saying that peppering the line of Offa’s Dyke was innumerable heritage interpretation panels should be a priority. Still, at present it remains the case that Wat’s Dyke is better served than its longer neighbour (if only just about!: see Swogger and Williams 2020; 2021; Williams 2020a) and there are no effective bilingual heritage interpretation panel anywhere the public at large will readily access them. In this regard, the aforementioned Bronygarth sign is a promising first and it is indeed on the Offa’s Dyke Path at a spot where the monument survives to impressive proportions. However, it is hardly at a prominent location and major heritage attractions close to or upon the line of Offa’s Dyke continue to ignore the monument. For example, this applies at the National Trust property of Chirk Castle where Offa’s Dyke remains obscure despite attempts to mark its line with a new bench and small panel.

So, the Coed Talon Cadw sign situated on a roadside – which has escaped my blogging attention until now – is a sign to nothing and nowhere without any explanation as to where and what locals and visitors should be seeing of Offa’s Dyke. As such, it is frankly bizarre, adding to the fact that there is only a sign for road-users heading south, not for those heading north along the line of the monument.

This entire situation draws into sharp relief the heritage interpretation challenge we face of communicating the presence and significance of a monument many don’t know is there, even when it survives in monumental proportions. This challenge is all the more unassailable when Offa’s Dyke is denuded and/or disrupted (see also Ray 2020). Often late 19th and 20th/21st-century house-names and road-names are the only way the former presence, or surviving location, of the monument is manifest in the landscape (Williams 2020b). Still, this remains a key challenge to address if we wish to: ‘encourage contracts, to foster improved awareness, and to promote access to the monument that involves more than just a casual (or even a continuous walking) encounter along paths and across lanes’ (Ray and Bapty 2016: 375). While interpreting the monument through publications, new exhibitions ,and other digital initiatives are all very welcome (see Swogger 2019; Swogger and Williams 2020, Swogger and Williams 2021), a strategy for interpretation in the borderlands landscape itself remains to be developed and implemented.

References

Fox, C. 1955. Offa’s Dyke. A Field Survey of the Western Frontier-Works of Mercia in the Seventh and Eighth Centuries A.D. London: The British Academy/Oxford University Press.

Ray, K. 2020. The discomfort of frontiers: public archaeology and the politics of Offa’s Dyke, in K. Gleave, H. Williams and P. Clarke (eds) Public Archaeologies of Frontiers and Borderlands. Oxford: Archaeopress. 117–147.

Ray, K. and Bapty, I. 2016. Offa’s Dyke: Landscape and Hegemony in Eighth-Century Britain. Oxford: Windgather Press.

Swogger, J. 2019. Making earthworks visible: the examples of the Oswestry Heritage Comics Project. Offa’s Dyke Journal 1: 137-156.

Swogger, J. and Williams, H. 2020. Envisioning Wat’s Dyke, in K. Gleave, H. Williams and P. Clarke (eds) Public Archaeologies of Frontiers and Borderlands. Oxford: Archaeopress. 193–210.

Swogger, J. and Williams, H. 2021. Drawing the line: What’s Wat’s Dyke? Practice and process. Offa’s Dyke Journal 3: 211-242.

Williams, H. 2020a. Interpreting Wat’s Dyke in the 21st century, in K. Gleave, H. Williams and P. Clarke (eds) Public Archaeologies of Frontiers and Borderlands. Oxford: Archaeopress. 157–193.

Williams, H. 2020b. Living after Offa: place-names and social memory in the Welsh Marches. Offa’s Dyke Journal 2: 103–140.