Wat's Dyke

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wat's Dyke is a 40 mile earthwork running through the northern Welsh Marches from Basingwerk on the Dee estuary, passing to the east of Oswestry and onto Maesbury in Shropshire. It runs generally parallel to Offa's Dyke, sometimes within a few yards but never more than three miles away.

These days Wat's Dyke appears, at best, as a raised hedgerow but in other places is now no more than a crop mark, the ditch long since filled in and the bank ploughed away, but originally it was a considerable construction, considered to be better made than its Offan neighbour. It consists of the usual bank and ditch of an ancient dyke, with the ditch on the western side, meaning that the dyke faces Wales and by implication can been seen as protecting the English lands to the east. The placement of the dyke in the terrain also shows that care was taken to provide clear views to the west and to use local features to the best defensive advantage.

The consensus view places the date of construction to the early 8th Century by Aethelbald king of Mercia who reigned from 716 to 757, Aethelbald's successor Offa building the dyke which carries his name sometime during his reign (757 to 796). Offa's Dyke is viewed as being an 'improved' version, longer, possibly bigger and placed further west in order to acquire more land.

However excavations in the 1990's at Maes-y-Clawdd near Oswestry uncovered the remains of a small fire site together with eroded shards of Romano-British pottery and quantities of charcoal, which have been Radiocarbon_dating dated to a date between 411 and 561 AD (centered around 446 AD). ^[1] This evidence would seem to place the building of the dyke in the era of the post-Roman kingdom whose capital was at Wroxeter (just south of modern day Shrewsbury) about 10 miles to the east.

Interpretation of Wat's Dyke based on this evidence would suggest a number of possibilities: the dyke formed part of the late Roman attempts to counter ‘barbarian’ attacks (i.e. Pictish and Irish) in the region of modern North Wales; or that it indicates a partition of the area following the English annexation of Wroxeter in the 7th century. Another idea is that it marks a division of the early Kingdom of Powys which can be seen as a possible evolution of the Wroxeter based Romano-British kingdom. These theories all have the construction of Wat's Dyke much earlier and in a different political climate to the building of Offa's dyke by Saxon Mercia in the 8th century.^[2]

The dating of the fire site and hence the dyke is disputed by some. It is suggested that owing to the difficulties inherent in radiocarbon dating, this single date cannot be trusted and also that the dyke could easily have been built on top of the fire site at a later date. ^[3] Without more evidence from excavations revealing either Romano-British or later Saxon finds nearly everything about Wat's Dyke remains uncertain.

[edit] Further reading

• Blake, Steve and Scott, Lloyd (2000): The Keys to Avalon: The True Location of Arthur’s Kingdom Revealed. published by Element Books.
• Worthington, Margaret (1997): Wat’s Dyke: An Archaeological and Historical Enigma, Bulletin John Rylands Library, Manchester, Vol 79, no. 3, 1997.
• Hannaford, H.R. (1997): Archaeological on Wat’s Dyke at Maes-y-Clawdd, Archaeology Service, Shropshire County Council, report no. 132., December 1997.

[edit] References