In popular culture and heritage interpretation, Offa’s Dyke is often perceived as synonymous with King Offa and the ‘Anglo-Saxons’ more broadly as oppositional to ‘the Welsh’. So as well as considering how the monument and its maker are perceived along the monument and in the Welsh Marches more broadly, a further aspect of considering Offa’s Dyke’s cultural and social significance in the present is to address how it is referred to elsewhere. In this regard, I was struck by a recent visit to Criccieth Castle, originally a native Welsh fortification that captures the story of the Welsh princes, English kings and Welsh rebellion between the mid-13th and early 15th centuries.

Here, as part of the broader heritage interpretation of the region, we find a timeline from the late 4th century when the Roman ‘leave Wales’ up to the early 15th century and the Owain Glyndwr ‘rises against the English’.

Because of this timeline design, the deserve is to reduce time-spans down to precise dates.

Hence, I was surprised to see Offa’s Dyke’s construction as not only the single event of the 8th century included on the timeline for Wales, but also a precise date afforded to its construction: 784.

It is notable to observe the prominence of Offa’s Dyke: considered a century-defining moment in the history of Wales (above the line). It is contextualised in relation to broader historical events and processes, the closest of which was the ‘Rise of Islam in Europe’ (632-750) and the ‘Death of Charlemagne’ (814) (below the line).

Why AD784? Does this correlate with a specific event that might be inferred as associated with building Offa’s Dyke? I honestly cannot think of one that pertains to the history of Mercia and explicitly might be taken as a start-date or end-date for the construction of Offa’s Dyke!

AD 784 is determined by Stenton to be earliest date at which Offa might have gained ascendancy and the Annales Cambriae records Offa harrying the Welsh in the summer of 784 and once again in 795. As a result, he suggests the closing 11 years of Offa’s reign were a ‘peaceful interval … for the building of the Dyke’ (Stenton 1955: xviii-xix). However, as Williams reviews (2019: 47), if the Annales Cambriae is being utilised to refer to combat between the British and the Mercians, the range of options for using this to infer the construction of Offa’s Dyke include 760, 778, 784 and 795! None of these dates can be connected with any certainty to the monument’s commissioning, construction, completion or use! Erik Grigg clearly states: ‘Although two entries record Offa attacking the Britons (in 778 and 784), the earliest texts make no mention of dykes’ (Grigg 2018: 97).

Does it simply stand for a point where Offa was nearing the height of his reign and powers and thus a ‘likely’ date? Maybe! But there are implications for creating such false precision from our sketchy sources.

Or is it just a random date plucked from the late 8th century for brevity and only accidentally thus affording a false sense of historical security for the viewer/reader of the heritage interpretation panel?

It goes without saying that, in archaeological terms, we lack precise confirmed scientific dates for the building of Offa’s Dyke as wholly or exclusively built by King Offa who (reigned from 757 to his death in 796) in the late 8th century (although it remains a strong likelihood at present) (Belford 2019). All studies to date have been extremely circumspect as a result (Hill and Worthington 2003; Ray and Bapty 2016; Grigg 2018). Certainly, we lack the evidence to pin its construction down to a precise half century, quarter century or decade, let alone a single year!

Whether deliberate, casual or purely random, I’m stumped regarding how AD 784 was fixed upon exclusively rather than a span of years pertaining to Offa’s entire reign or the last decade of his rule.

It either means the date was selected at random, as a shorthand for a span of years in the latter stage of Offa’s reign, or else I’m missing something glaringly obvious! Help me out boffins!

What I would contend, however, is that this level of precision is a form of misinformation in itself for the public to uncritically consume without clarification.

References

Belford, P. 2019. Hidden earthworks: excavation and protection of Offa’s and Wat’s Dykes, Offa’s Dyke Journal 1: 80–95.

Grigg, E. 2018. Warfare, Raiding and Defence in Early Medieval Britain. Marlborough: Robert Hale.

Hill, D. and Worthington, M. 2003. Offa’s Dyke: History and Guide. Stroud: Tempus

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

Stenton, F. 1955. Foreword, in C. Fox. Offa’s Dyke. London: The British Academy.

Williams, A. 2019. Offa’s Dyke. ‘The stuff that dreams are made of’ Offa’s Dyke Journal 1: 32-57.