Offa, king of Mercia
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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. |
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Offa's Dyke on the Herefordshire border
north of Kington |
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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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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 is believed
to have 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'. |
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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.
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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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