Monday 31 May 2010

The long man of Wilmington.


The 'Long Man' is a figure carved into the chalk downs at Wilmington; a small village near Lewes in the wonderful county of East Sussex in the south of England. I've painted it several times.

Its origins are unknown, but archaeologists believe it to date from the sixteenth century. The man himself measures 70 metres tall and holds two long poles; one in each hand. Theories abound as to the significance of the two poles, one of the more rational was recently explained by Tom Stephenson in his posting entitled The Hog's Back (Tuesday 25th May). Any further theories will be gratefully accepted.

http://tomstephenson.blogspot.com/

There are plenty of these hill-side chalk pictures around England. Two of the most notable being the White Horse at Uffington in Oxfordshire (white horses are the most popular), and the Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorset (famous for childless couples spending the night on a certain part of his anatomy.... Look it up on Wiki).

But for a Sussex/Surrey chap like myself, nothing beats The Long Man at Wilmington. It's a place of mystery, ancestry, and pilgrimage.

9 comments:

  1. Is it only reckoned to be 16th century Cro? I have a book called 'The Scouring of the White Horse', 1889, which describes the festivals which grew around the 'scouring' or cleaning of these chalk things, right up to the 20th C. I wonder when the scouring of them turned into village past-times?

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  2. TV 'celebs' Trinny & Someone, recently tried to change the Long Man into a Long Woman. They were told to eff-off.

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  3. Sadly, it's not uncommon. The White Horse of Westbury near here, used to be a nice primitive one like Uffington, but some retired army chappie in the 19th century decided to turn it into a naturalistic horse and that's what we're left with today. A bloody rocking-horse, pretty much.

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  4. P.S. If you go onto some puritanical tourist websites, they pictures of the Cerne Abbas giant with the vital bit blacked out! I'm going to post up a picture of it on my blog right now, for the sake of others who may not have seen it...

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  5. Huh. I'd never heard of it. England has so many of these ancient, pagan things. It must be something else to actually go and see one in person! I'll have to look it up now.

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  6. I took archaeology last fall and was absolutely mesmerized! Loved it and love these mysterious drawings in the earth. How can anyone ever say life is boring? There are too many fascinating things to discover in this world and this is one of them. I'd not seen this before (I know, I know. I'm from the U. S. and we're too busy thinking about what we have over here...dumb).

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  7. I love that snake earthwork by the ancient native Americans, Julie. Like the Australian aborigines, they were doing this stuff for about 30,000 years before we turned up and killed all the buffalo, etc.

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  8. Yeah, that buffalo story is just too awful for words. Good thing that they have built up the herds again. You can see a large one on Antelope Island in the middle of the Great Salt Lake-just outside of Salt Lake City. If you want to see some very creative photography of them and other fabulous shots go to my crappyphotography.blogspot.com. Josh is a wonderful photographer that I got to know by just clicking on the "next blog" button-love it.

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