Place-names and Offa’s Dyke: The Limits of Inference

Abstract

This chapter examines English and Welsh place-names along the line of Offa’s Dyke. It is divided into three sections, each concentrating on a separate area and each given a rather different focus. First, names either side of the dyke passing through the hundred of Clun in south-west Shropshire are examined to show the nature of the evidence and some of its complexity, as well — it is hoped — as some of its interest. The second section reconsiders some specific arguments about the dating of English names lying to the west of the dyke in modern Radnorshire and Montgomeryshire. Finally the third section, in rather speculative vein, attempts to co-ordinate a ‘reading’ of the place-name evidence in Oswestry hundred, north-west Shropshire, with the different lines indicated by Offa’s Dyke, Wat’s Dyke and various types of historical evidence. It is suggested, on one hand, that a cultural boundary visible in the later medieval period may have roots deep in the Anglo-Saxon period, but also that this line was probably always only one element in a complex skein of boundaries that made up the Anglo-Welsh frontier.