Welsh Marches - Origins: Mercia and The Welsh

Origins: Mercia and The Welsh

After the decline and fall of the Roman Empire which occupied Britain until about AD 410, the area which is now Wales comprised a number of separate Romano-British kingdoms, including Powys in the east. Over the next few centuries, the Angles, Saxons and others gradually conquered and settled in eastern and southern Britain. The kingdom of Mercia, under Penda, became established around Lichfield, and initially established strong alliances with the Welsh kings. However, his successors sought to expand Mercia further westwards into what is now Cheshire, Shropshire and Herefordshire. Campaigns and raids from Powys then led in the early 8th century to the building of Wat's Dyke, a boundary earthwork extending from the Severn valley near Oswestry to the Dee estuary. As the power of Mercia grew, a string of garrisoned market towns such as Shrewsbury and Hereford defined the borderlands as much as Offa's Dyke, a stronger and longer boundary earthwork erected by order of Offa of Mercia in the late 8th century. The Dyke still exists, and can best be seen at Knighton, close to the modern border between England and Wales.

In the centuries which followed, Offa's Dyke largely remained the frontier between the Welsh and English. Athelstan, often seen as the first king of a united England, summoned the British kings to a meeting at Hereford in AD 926, and according to William of Malmesbury laid down the boundary between Wales and England, particularly the disputed southern stretch where he specified that the River Wye should form the boundary. By the mid-eleventh century, Wales was united under Gruffudd ap Llywelyn of Gwynedd, until his death in 1063.