A confusing tangled tale revolves around a bell here. Offa was supposed to have lived in Sutton Walls, or alternatively down in Marden below. As mentioned, there is a church on the spot where Offa murdered St. Ethelbert, and a few yards away, a pond. When the pond was being cleaned out, a bell was found, eighteen feet below the level of the adjacent ground.
The Dean of Hereford said (in the 1840s) that the bell “was formed of a sheet of mixed metal, which had been hammered into shape: it is four-sided.. riveted together on each side..” The Herefordshire SMR says it was of iron and bronze, and calls it ‘Celtic’, but it is surely newer – and where is it now?
He also said, “There is a tradition at Marden among the common people that there lies in the river Lugg, near the church, a large silver bell, which will never be taken out until two white oxen are attached to it, to draw it from the river.”
and elsewhere (eg at the Hereford Times ) there’s talk of a mermaid – the oxen had a go pulling the bell out, but the mermaid dragged it back.
It seems like one of those chicken-and-egg situations (like with the Mold cape) where you can’t tell how much story there really was before the discovery.
See the Archaeological Journal for 1848 (v5) p330
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=XZ08AAAAIAAJ&pg=RA1-PA330
smr.herefordshire.gov.uk/education/images/handbell_marden.jpg2.jpg