Origins of Hereford — History of Hereford

The Border on the Wye

The Victoria Footbridge over the Wye at Hereford. At this point was the ford which gave the town its name. John Leland described this in the early 16th century — "by the whiche many passyd over, or evar the great bridge on Wy at Herford were made".

By the mid 8th century the River Wye formed a border between two culturally distinct entities. To the south the speakers of early Welsh inhabited the kingdom of Glywysing and followed the teachings of the native British church. To the north the speakers of early English were subjects of the Mercian kingdom and followed the practices imported by St Augustine.

To the English speakers, the Celtic speakers of Britain were Weallus — foreigners — a word related to Walloon and Vlach, and possibly implying those people occupying what had previously been Roman Imperial territories. The western Celts referred to themselves as Britons — they came to use also Combrogi — fellow-countrymen, later the term Cymru — companions was used. To the British, the English speakers were Sais. The incomers were mainly two ill-defined groups — Angles, moving westward from East Anglia and into Mercia (the "march" or "border"), and Saxons, specifically the West Saxons from Gloucestershire. After the destruction of English power in 1066, the British were to face a new and terrible enemy — y Freinc — the French, as the Normans were referred to in Wales.

The origin of Hereford, on the border between these two peoples, is extremely obscure. One story is that Hereford was site of the cathedral of a British bishopric with its origins in Roman times and transferred from Magnis — this does not seem likely. Another story, of the foundation of the church of Caerfawydd (Hereford) by Gereint son of Erbin, a hero of Welsh legend, is a forgery by the poet and antiquary Edward Williams ("Iolo Morganwg", 1747–1826). The modern Welsh name for Hereford is Henfordd — "the old way" — and this name was certainly in use in the later middle ages, but the story that the earliest name for the place was Caerfawydd or Trefawydd — "of the birch trees" — is also medieval and cannot be ignored.

Archaeological evidence suggests that there might have been a settlement in Hereford as long ago as the Mesolithic period. Other finds indicate human activity in the Neolithic and through to the Iron Age. Roman finds are also fairly common within the city. People would always have used the land for something — hunting, grazing livestock, growing crops, living on. As a continuous settlement — a place where numbers of people larger than family groups live — Hereford's origins are much more recent.

The park now known as the Castle Green in Hereford is, as the name suggests, the site of Hereford's castle. Before the castle was built in the 11th century this was the site of the monastery of St Guthlac. During two excavations here, in 1960 and 1973, over 132 skeletons were found and some of these were carbon 14 dated. The results suggest that the cemetery may have been in use as early as the late 7th or early 8th century.

On the western side of the present city centre, buried beneath the, later, Mercian defensive bank, archaeologists discovered grain-drying kilns dating from the 8th century.

It remains uncertain whether the builders of the grain-drying kilns or the first people buried in the cemetery should be considered "Welsh" or "English". What is certain is that they would not have considered that they were in such a country as "Wales" or "England".

Although legend says that a certain Putta was created bishop of Hereford in the late 7th century, there is no contemporary record of a bishop at that time (the first record of a bishop of Hereford only dates from 801). It cannot be proven that the immediate area of the City of Hereford itself was within the area governed by the Mercians until well into the 8th century.

Offa of Mercia

Offa's Dyke on the Herefordshire border north of Kington.

In 757 Offa became king of Mercia. A contemporary of Charlemagne, Offa was the leading king of the English-speaking people of Britain in the 8th century. Such was his influence that he persuaded the Pope that a third archbishop should be created in Mercia to join those of York and Canterbury. The see of Hereford formed part of this new province under Hygeberht, the Archbishop of Lichfield. After Offa's death the archbishopric of Lichfield disappeared.

Offa gained a victory over Glywysing in a battle near the site of modern Hereford in 760, and a temporary truce was established. King Ithel ap Morgan had died some time shortly after 745 and the British (or perhaps by this time we may use the term Welsh) would have been led by one or more of his sons — Ffernfael, Rhodri, Rhys and Meurig.

Offa built the great earthwork now known as Offa's Dyke on the border between Mercia and Powys. Although various lengths of earthworks in Herefordshire and Gloucestershire are referred to as Offa's Dyke, there is good evidence to suggest that the dyke proper terminates around Kington in north Herefordshire.

Where rivers marked the boundaries with other kingdoms the maintenance and control of the crossing points was of importance, both for trade and in case of war. Offa seems to have built a causeway and paved ford at Oxford on his southern border with Wessex and similar attention was paid to his border with the East Angles.

Hereford, on the Wye border with Glywysing/Gwent, lies on the north-east to south-west route between South Wales and the centre of Mercian power around Tamworth and Lichfield. It might have been this strategic position which led to the first non-religious development at Hereford.

St Ethelbert

Sutton lies 6km north north-east of Hereford. Here, on this important route, Offa built a palace. At Sutton in 794 he is alleged to have murdered Ethelbert, the young King of the East Angles. Tradition has Offa atoning for this deed by becoming a benefactor of the Cathedral at Hereford, where Ethelbert's body was subsequently interred.

Miracles were attributed to Ethelbert. The saint's severed head was said to have fallen off the cart taking his body to Hereford. A blind man tripped over the head and was cured. In Hereford, a spring suddenly appeared at the place where his cortege rested before being taken to the cathedral for burial. Ethelbert was canonised, and his tomb, in what became the cathedral church of St Mary the Virgin and St Ethelbert the King, became a major centre of pilgrimage. The tales also recount that up to this time the English had called the settlement on the Wye Fernleigh, changing the name to Hereford afterwards. The English name for the town means "Ford of the army" while its Welsh name, Henffordd, means "the Old road".

Hereford Cathedral and Broad Street from the spire of All Saints church. Beyond the cathedral is the bishop's palace. The hill on the horizon is Dinedor, the site of one of Herefordshire's many Iron Age hill-forts.

The Planned Town

Hereford did not just grow. It was laid out as an undefended town with a grid of streets. The evidence suggests that this happened in the second half of the 8th century, that is in the reign of Offa. Within this planned town were single storey post-built houses with earth floors. Each house stood on an individual, approximately square, plot measuring about 300 square metres.

Within a generation or two, for some reason, part of this planned town was sacrificed in order to build a defensive rampart. This was the first in a sequence of defences which were to stamp their own marks on the plan of the city.