The Kingdoms

There was no Powys in the modern sense until 1974, but there was a Powys, and it was much larger. The kingdom stretched east into what is now Shropshire and Cheshire and was progressively pushed back by Mercia over several centuries.

The county today covers ground that belonged to at least four early medieval polities. Powys in the north. Brycheiniog in the south, its dated royal seat the crannog in Llangorse Lake. Buellt around Builth. And between the Wye and the Severn, the loose group of territories called Rhwng Gwy a Hafren, which never became a kingdom and was fought over accordingly.

The dyke

Offa's Dyke is the largest single thing anyone built in Britain between the Romans and the Normans: some eighty miles of bank and ditch, mostly with the ditch facing west.

Its purpose is argued about. A defended frontier, an agreed boundary, a customs barrier, a statement of Mercian power intended as much for Mercians as for the Welsh — all have been proposed. It is conventionally attributed to Offa of Mercia, king from 757 to 796.

Knighton is the only town on it and takes its Welsh name, Tref-y-clawdd, from it.

The church

Christianity here is older than the parish system and organised differently. The clas was a mother church with a community of clergy serving a wide territory, and several of the most important in Wales were in this county. Meifod in the Vyrnwy valley was the burial place of the princes of Powys. Glasbury on the Wye preserves the word in its name.

Early inscribed stones survive across the county, most reused in later church fabric. They carry Latin, sometimes ogham, and personal names, and they are the closest thing to contemporary documents that most of Powys produced.

The Vikings and the Mercians

Raiding reached Brycheiniog in the 890s, which is very likely why Tewdwr ab Elise built a defended island in a lake rather than living in a hall. It did not save him. In 916 a Mercian army under Æthelflæd burned the crannog and carried off the king's wife and thirty-three others.

That single entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is one of the few securely dated events in early medieval Powys, and it is a raid recorded by the people who carried it out.

Where to see it

Offa's Dyke north of Knighton, where the earthwork is at its most complete.

Meifod church and its large curving churchyard, which preserves the shape of the clas enclosure.

Llangorse Lake, where the crannog is visible as a low tree-covered island from the shore. The finds are at Amgueddfa Cymru in Cardiff.

Inscribed stones at Defynnog, Llanfihangel Cwmdu and a dozen other parish churches, usually built into a wall and rarely signposted.