Hero
Offa's Lost Palace
A mighty Saxon king, they say, once held court in this quiet village.
Stand where it happened
- What's there
- The parish church; the palace is lost
- Legend from
- Saxon
- Tone
- Curious
Coming into Offley, where, legend says, the great Saxon king Offa once had his palace.
Offley proudly links its name to Offa, the powerful eighth-century King of Mercia, who is said to have built a palace here. No trace of it has been identified, but the tradition is old and the village name is often read as 'Offa's clearing'. The parish also turns up in W. B. Gerish's collection of Hertfordshire folklore for a quite different reason: a local youth was said to have been cured of the King's Evil, the disease scrofula, through religious observances rather than the royal touch. Offley Place, rebuilt in 1810, keeps a Tudor porch and a seventeenth-century wing.