The famous Long Man of Wilmington is a gigantic figure some 226 feet in length, cut into the turf on the steep northern flank of Windover Hill, facing Wilmington Priory.

 

The outline of the Long Man has now been permanently picked out in white brick, and has been so since 1874; originally his form would have been simply 'drawn' by cutting away the turf from the white chalk, but in the course of time he had been allowed to become so overgrown as to be only dimly visible when the light fell obliquely or when the snow lay longer in his outline, and so a restoration became essential.

 

In his overgrown state, he was also sometimes known locally as the Green Man, but that name is now forgotten. The Long Man has been ascribed to every period from the Neolithic to the late medieval, but it would be fair to say that the probable age of the Long Man lies between Celtic and the pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon periods.

 

A recent theory compares his pose, as he stands with a staff in either hand, with that of a naked warrior in a horned helmet, carrying two spears, engraved on a belt-buckle found in the seventh-century Saxon grave at Finglesham, Kent. This figure, and others like it on Scandanavian helmets, are connected with the cult of a war-god, and may represent either the supernatural being or his human devotees.

 

But, of course, staffs are not spears, and the Long Man wears no helmet. Presumably what happened was that when Sussex became Christian the distinctive emblems of the warrior god were deliberately turfed over, leaving an innofensive giant, less objectionable to Christian eyes.

 

The giant must have remained locally popular, for only repeated scraping away the turf could have kept him in existence through the centuries so that he survived, however dimly, until he was given his permanent outline in Victorian times. Scouring such a large figure must have been a considerable task, and it is probably fair to assume that it was a communal undertaking, enlivened by sports and merrymaking, but unfortunately no records of such activity have survived.

 

The local legend is that a living giant once had his home on Windover Hill, but had been killed, and the figure was either a memorial to him or the actual outline of his body, drawn around him as he lay dead on the slope.

 

Access

Best seen from the car park of Wilmington Priory, off the A27, eight miles north-west of Eastbourne. The South Downs Way runs just above the Long Man, and there's a convenient lay-by up the hill from the priory on your right.

 

 

 

 

 

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