Offa's Dyke in the context of "Welsh Lost Lands"

In archaeology, earthworks are artificial changes in land level, typically made from piles of artificially placed or sculpted rocks and soil. Earthworks can themselves be archaeological features, or they can show features beneath the surface.

The England–Wales border, sometimes referred to as the Wales–England border or the Anglo-Welsh border, runs for 160 miles (260 km) from the Dee estuary, in the north, to the Severn estuary in the south, separating England and Wales.

It has followed broadly the same line since the 8th century, and in part that of Offa's Dyke; the modern boundary was fixed in 1536, when the former marcher lordships which occupied the border area were abolished and new county boundaries were created. The administrative boundary of Wales was confirmed in the Local Government Act 1972. Whether Monmouthshire was part of Wales, or an English county treated for most purposes as though it were Welsh, was also settled by the 1972 Act, which included it in Wales.

Bedford is a market town in Bedfordshire, England. At the 2011 Census, the population was 106,940. Bedford is the county town of Bedfordshire and seat of the Borough of Bedford local government district.

Bedford was founded at a ford on the River Great Ouse and is thought to have been the burial place of King Offa of Mercia, who is remembered for building Offa's Dyke on the Welsh border. Bedford Castle was built by Henry I, although it was destroyed in 1224. Bedford was granted borough status in 1166 and has been represented in Parliament since 1265. It is known for its large population of Italian descent.

According to some scholars, a national identity of the English as the people or ethnic group dominant in England can be traced to the Anglo-Saxon period. For Lindy Brady and Marc Morris, Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People and the construction of Offa's Dyke exemplifies the establishment of such an identity as early as AD 731, becoming a national identity with the unification of the Kingdom of England in the ninth and tenth centuries, and changing status once again in the eleventh century after the Norman Conquest, when Englishry came to be the status of the subject indigenous population. Similarly, Adrian Hastings considers England to be the oldest example of a "mature nation", and links the development of this nationhood to the Christian Church and spread of written popular languages to existing ethnic groups.

In contrast, John Breuilly rejects the notion these examples constituted "national" identity and criticizes the assumption that continued usage of a term such as 'English' means continuity in its meaning. Patrick J. Geary agrees, arguing names were adapted to different circumstances by different powers and could convince people of continuity, even if radical discontinuity was the lived reality. Geary also rejects the conflation of early medieval and contemporary group identities as a myth, arguing it is a mistake to conclude continuity based on the recurrence of names and that historians fail to recognize the differences between earlier ways of perceiving group identities and more contemporary attitudes, stating they are "trapped in the very historical process we are attempting to study". Krishan Kumar also points out that Bede's 'English' did not refer to a unified people, but rather "still diverse groups of Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others with distinct ethnicities".