#offa's dyke

The English and the Welsh, it must be admitted, had never really seen eye to eye. From the moment that the first Anglo-Saxon settlers had arrived in Britain, their relationship with the Britons was characterised by mutual distrust and suspicion. Welisc was the Anglo-Saxon name for the Britons: it means 'strangers'. And all too often this estrangement resulted in bursts of war and violence. Offa's Dyke, the great earthwork erected between England and Wales in the eight century, stands as an eloquent reminder of the extent to which the two peoples were divided.