News

Launch of ODA YouTube channel Tuesday, 12/03/2024

Join us in 2024 to share, enjoy, understand and discover more about Offa’s Dyke. Our newly curated interpretive displays at the Offa’s Dyke Centre will inspire you.

 

 

 

 

English Heritage Podcast – Walking Offa’s Dyke with Prof Keith Ray Monday, 4/03/2024

Prof Keith Ray, curator of our Offa’s Dyke interpretive exhibition, talks to English Heritage’s Charles Rowe about King Offa, the Saxon kingdom of Mercia and the archaeological earthwork Offa’s Dyke. Walking along a section of the eponymous Offa’s Dyke Path in Gloucestershire, where the Trail is coincident with the monument, Keith explains some of the challenges associated with managing visitors in a sensitive archaeological landscape. He also discusses the important role played by the Offa’s Dyke Association in influencing long distance walkers towards walking the Trail during drier months of the year when there is less risk of erosion and damage to the Dyke.  Listen to the podcast: https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/EHE9742327131?selected=EHE6080520973

The photo was taken in March 2023 during Keith’s Offa’s Dyke, Encounters and Explanations project, an epic 23 day, 209 mile walk along the entire length of Offa’s Dyke. Also visit @digitalself4 on X (formerly Twitter) to for his daily VLOGs broadcast along the journey.

 

 

‘Offa’s Dyke – Encounters & Explanations’ – Follow ODA friend Professor Keith Ray’s journey along Offa’s Dyke Friday, 17/03/2023

The ODA is proud to be associated with Professor Ray’s journey along the full course of Offa’s Dyke. Keith’s research for his forthcoming book, Offa’s Dyke: Encounters and Explanations, will enable locals and visitors alike to understand the monument in its entirety, not just the fifty percent coincident with the National Trail. Tune in to Keith’s progress with his video blogs (offaprof) on Twitter @digitalself4

Keith’s press release

‘Offa’s Dyke, the mighty earthwork built in the eighth century by the most famous of the Kings of Anglo-Saxon Mercia, ran 150 miles from Sedbury Cliffs, on the Severn Estuary near Chepstow, to Gronant Beach, near Prestatyn in North Wales. The Dyke helped create a frontier zone between Mercia in the east and the Welsh kingdoms to the west. Although the Dyke does not follow the line of the modern political boundary, it can be seen as marking a first version of the border between England and Wales. Offa’s legacy remains with us today, over 1200 years later.

Between 15 March and 6 April Professor Keith Ray of Cardiff University will walk the entire route of the Dyke, as closely as possible, from south to north. His route will take in not only the sections which survive as huge landscape features through the Welsh Marches and Gloucestershire, but also lengths lost, hidden or damaged over time, now being identified by current research.

Keith will take not only the national trail, the Offa’s Dyke Path, which follows the Dyke for roughly 50% of its length, but also a series of unfamiliar routes to trace the rest. Although the parts of the Dyke that lie away from the Offa’s Dyke Path are less well-known, they are just as crucial to understanding Offa’s border zone and how it might have worked.

Keith’s walk is part of a project to strengthen understanding of the Dyke in its entirety. He has two objectives:

  1. To follow, as closely as rights of way and developing knowledge permit, the whole course of the Dyke as built – a first for a single walk.

  1. To complete field studies for a new book, Offa’s Dyke: Encounters and Explanations. This will be the first field and walking guide to help people explore the whole Dyke, including the long sections where the route differs from the line of the Offa’s Dyke Path.

At the same time, the walk is intended to make people aware of the vital, ongoing efforts of the Offa’s Dyke Association, in studying the Dyke, monitoring its condition, and promoting its conservation.

KEITH RAY

Professor Keith Ray was awarded an MBE for his services to archaeology in Herefordshire. He has researched and written about Offa’s Dyke and the Early Medieval frontier for 20 years. Today, Keith is Honorary Professor of Archaeology in the School of History, Archaeology and Religion at Cardiff University.

For further information, please contact:

Terry Morgan (terrymorgan.harefields@gmail.com Tel. 07876 446666)

Walking with Offa – Cerdded gydag Offa Sunday, 30/10/2022

To coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Offa’s Dyke Path in 2021 ODA trustee and artist Dan Llywelyn Hall walked its 177 miles length and made a series of paintings inspired by the sights and scenes along the way.

Dan’s paintings were on display during summer 2021 in our newly refurbished Offa’s Dyke Centre in Knighton, Powys. You can still buy the exhibition’s accompanying book: Walking with Offa – Cerdded gydag Offa from our on-line shop for £7.99 + p&p. All of the exhibition paintings are featured in the book.

 

 

Dan’s paintings

Course of the Ancients

Exiled Visitor

Llanthony Spirit Portal

The Grand Master of Buttington

Elation at World’s End

Quarry of Caractacus

Radnor Processional

The Borrow and Thurlow Encounter

Synergy at Ceri Pole

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘Awen’ an historical fiction by Susan Mayse, Holdfast Books Saturday, 1/08/2020

Susan Mayse, award winning Canadian author, also ODA member, has issued a digital second edition of her historical fiction, Awen, published by Holdfast Books, available from Amazon. 

The first hardback edition, published in January 1997 by Eastern Washington University Press, was shortlisted for the Georgette Heyer Historical Fiction Prize.

Mayse sets the scene for us in this piece on her website https://susanmayse.ca/books/

Inspired by the ninth-century Welsh poetry cycle Canu Heledd (the Heledd poetry), Awen draws on three enigmas of early medieval Wales: the inscription on a ruined memorial stone, the monumental earthwork that marked the border between early Welsh and English kingdoms, and the unnamed poet of Canu Heledd.

One woman alone, a homeless wanderer shocked by grief, survived the destruction of her family and her kingdom of Powys. Her name was Heledd. One poet made her the voice and conscience of his own devastated Powys generations later. His purpose and identity remain unknown. Only fragments of the poetry cycle still exist to suggest what happened on the Welsh border in the seventh and eighth centuries.

This novel tells of a fragile peace between enemies. It is the story of Cynfarch’s journey from dispossessed hostage to king’s poet, his obsession with a lost kinswoman, his hard exile and the betrayals that ended peace forever. Awen reconstructs the shattered portrait of a complex, brilliant culture long since swept away on the flood of history’.

Publisher Holdfast Books also tempts the reader to this eighth century tale:

Long after Arthur lay in a rain-washed grave, long after the legends faded from memory, a new generation defended an old border. White town in the breast of the wood, his forever is its wealth: blood on the face of the grass.

In a dangerous era, an enigmatic poem portrayed a war fugitive wandering her ruined kingdom; an earthen wall transformed enemies into uneasy allies; and a man with a famous name wrote an inscription of lies on a memorial stone. All three survived twelve centuries as fragments of a nearly forgotten world. Awen imagines the origins of the poetry and restores the breath of life to a brilliant poet in a dark time’.

We are delighted to help ODA member Susan promote her book in the UK. 

Please support the ODA by using this link to buy the book from Amazon, or see below for a preview of the book.