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INTRODUCTION

The ancient hill figures of England are a remarkable series of symbols, produced by the removal of the hillside turf to expose the underlying rock, in most cases, chalk. By their nature they are conspicuous for miles, their size being measured in tens, often hundreds, of feet, and their positioning being on hillsides visible from afar. In England, there are many hill figures, the majority being concentrated into the County of Wiltshire. However, most English, and both Scottish, hill figures date from the eighteenth century, or later, and so do not come into the category of ancient, though they are listed below.

Hill figures have to be kept in good order, or the surrounding grass can re-colonize the cleared area in the short space of a few years. This cleaning in former times was accomplished by regular “scouring” by local people, taking place sporadically or at a fixed period of years. These scourings took place on specific days, which were made festivals with sports and merry-making. The necessity for scouring has, however, been taken as the opportunity for alteration of certain figures, with the consequence that only one phallic figure survives to-day. Lack of scouring and the enclosure of common land has caused the loss of figures at Oxford, Plymouth, Tysoe and Cambridge (Wandlebury), and probably other, unrecorded, sites. The figures at Tysoe and Wandlebury have since been reconstructed from aerial photography and other well-attested archaeological techniques. The figure at Wandlebury was partially excavated in the twentieth century but was subsequently allowed by its custodians to be almost destroyed. At Westbury, a more ancient figure was obliterated by an eighteenth century “improver”, who did not like the appearance of the ancient figure, replacing it with a “thoroughbred” (since modified). Westbury’s ancient example is, however, fortunately still recorded.

Writers on the subject of English hill figures frequently state that they are unique, because no chalk-cut figures exist anywhere else in the World. In fact, certain similar figures exist, or have existed, on the continet of Europe. A hammer was carved into the turf on a hill near Tours in France, in commemoration of Charles Martel’s defeat of the Arabs there in 732 A.D., and Prince Eugene had an eagle made to mark his capture of Belgrade in 1716. In North America, figures are dilineted as earthern mounds, such as the Ohio Serpent Mound and the Wisconsin effigy mounds. In South America, the plain of Nazca in Peru is covered with alinements and figures of comparable size with the English hill-figures, but visible only from the air.

Hill figures were an expression of pagan religion, and as such were modified or obliterated by Christian fanatics. The Long Man of Wilmington may originally have had genitals similar to those extant on the Cerne Helis figure. The Whiteleaf Cross was originally a huge penis, Weland’s Stoc, but was modified into the present cross by monastic activists. The origins of England’s ancient figures are unrecorded in all cases but one, this being the Ditchling Cross, carved in the turf of the South Downs in Sussex, which was cut for the souls of those who died in the Battle of Mount Harry, where King Henry III was defeated by Simon de Montfort. Written references to the ancient figures are late and sparse. The earliest is to the Whiteleaf Cross, then a phallus, in a charter of 903. The Plymouth figure was first mentioned in 1486, Cambridge in 1605, Tysoe 1607, Whiteleaf (as a cross) 1742, Cerne 1764 and the Long Man of Wilmington 1779. The last two were written about after landscape “improvers” of the eighteenth century had taken an interest in white horses as additional features to their repertoire, along with fake Grecian temples, “Druidic” grottoes and Gothick follies. In that century, the influence of antiquaries who had written about the ancient figures led to a spate of white horses being cut into various hillsides. From 1775 onward, hill figures were made at the whim of landowners and aesthetics. The most recent dates from 1951.

{2} In the 1950s, Guy Underwood of the British Museum dowsed the White Horse of Uffington and the Cerne Abbas giant. He found that they tallied with the dowsed geodetic lines, additional features being apparent. (See Uffington, below). These figures are at important sites which can be detected by dowsing. It has been suggested that hill figures were set up as signals to the gods above, or as territorial boundary-markers of various pre-Roman “tribes”. A remarkable survival of the use of hill figures as communication was their use until the 1930s on St. Kilda. The islanders from St.Kilda used to visit offshore islands annually in order to gather wool from the half-wild sheep which lived there. As this took some time, they were taken across by boat and left there to carry out the shearing of the sheep. When they were finished, they cut a figure in the turf, at which signal a boat was sent out to fetch them and the wool. This survival points to a former widespread usage of turf-cut symbols visible from great distances, either as geomantic markers of sacred sites, as at Tysoe, or as ritual figures, such as Wandlebury.

The laying-out of giant hill figures is not an easy task. To construct a properly-proportioned figure of great size is beyond the capacity of barbarous savages, daubed in the obligatory woad of the history-books. To lay out hill figures requires accurate scale drawings to be prepared in advance, and a recognized system of metrology. The work of Professor Thom on megalithic stone circles has shown that accurate mathematical calculation was achieved in Britain and Brittany earlier than 2000 BC. It is not difficult to infer that accurate scale drawing was known to the sages of the time, and the translation of a plan to the hillside would have been a relatively simple task. T.C. Lethbridge suggested that hill figures may have originated as temporary effigies in a religious enactment of the triumph of good over evil, or one god over another, in the same way that Sir Flinders Petrie discovered huge figures laid out on the ground in India as part of religious rites.

The Ancient Hill Figures of England, so far as they are known, are:

Cerne Abbas giant (Dorset) EXTANT
Wilmington giant (Sussex) EXTANT
Watlington white mark (Oxfordshire) EXTANT
Whiteleaf cross (Buckinghamshire) EXTANT
Bledlow Cross (Buckinghamshire) EXTANT
Ditchling Cross (Sussex) EXTANT
Uffington white horse (Berkshire) EXTANT
Westbury old horse (Wiltshire) DESTROYED
Tysoe red horse (Warwickshire) DESTROYED
Wandlebury giants (Cambridgeshire) DESTROYED
Plymouth giant (Devon) DESTROYED
Oxford giant (Oxfordshire) DESTROYED

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THE CERNE ABBAS GIANT

Cerne Giant
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The Cerne Abbas giant is probably the most impressive surviving ancient hill figure. Situated on Giant Hill, a quarter of a mile to the northwest of Cerne Abbas and 8 miles to the north of Dorchester, the figure faces westward, and was the centre of a late survival of a “particularly stubborn” form of paganism. Because of this, the figure, known locally as Helith or Helis, has survived the emasculation it surely would have suffered at the hand of Christian fanatics.

The figure is a naked man with accentuated penis, ribs and nipples, carrying in his right hand a massive club. Helis’s height is 180 feet, measuring 44 feet across the shoulders, with a head 23 feet across and brandishing a club 120 feet in length. The figure is laid out in outline only by a trench 2 feet in width and depth, in total length 1440 feet. Formerly, there were three characters carved between the giant’s legs, representing, in 18th century eyes, the letters IHS, an extremely implausible Christianization. Others have suggested that the figures were the numerals 748 or 798, IAO, ANO or JHD. Effectively, nobody has now a clue, and they are probably permanently lost.

Above the giant is an enclosure known as the Trundle or the Giant’s Frying Pan. In earlier times, a maypole made of a fir tree was set up in this enclosure as part of the Midsummer festivities, and the fertility attributes of the site are still utilized to this day. Childless couples still visit the giant, as this promotes fertility. There are a number of legends associated with the giant. It is said to have been cut around the outline of a real giant, who was tied down, Gulliver-fashion, whilst sleeping off a meal of stolen sheep, and slain by the villagers. It is said that at night the giant gets up and visits a local stream for a drink, and that he is a devourer of maidens, possibly a memory of human sacrifice. In total opposition to this last legend, it is also said that a girl who sleeps on the giant effigy will be mother of many children.

Guy Underwood discovered, by dowsing, next to the giant a small mound in the shape of a phallus. Near to the giant was Cerne Abbey. William of Malmesbury (1095–1143) wrote that in about the year 700 St. Augustine came with other Christian missionaries to convert the pagan stronghold of Cerne. The pagans, however, mocked the missionaries, sending them away with cows’ tails tied to them. The saint retaliated with a curse that all children born to the pagans should bear tails. This came about, and the pagans, repenting, asked him to return to remove the curse, upon which, at Augustine’s command, a crystal fountain of water broke forth in which the pagans were baptised. This is the present St. Austin’s well at Cerne. Augustine smashed up the idol of Heil, and founded the abbey. The hill figure, however, was not so easy to destroy, and regular scouring must have resumed soon after the conversion to Christianity, as the fecundity of the local herds and fields were believed to depend upon the continued preservation of Helis. Traditionally, the figure was scoured every seventh year.

T.C. Lethbridge believed that Helis was a Celtic variant of Helios, the Sun. The resemblance of the giant’s face to that of Magog re-discovered by Lethbridge is discussed below. Various “authorities” have named the giant as Hercules, the Emperor Commodus, Priapus, Helios and Ogma-sunface. Flinders Petrie believed the figure to be at the latest as old as the beginning of the Bronze Age, at least 4000 years in age. W. Black (1872) attributed a Roman origin to Helis. As far as can be ascertained at present, Black was the first researcher to attempt to realize the significance of the placing of sacred sites in relation to the overall plan. {4} On the giant, he wrote: “ This remarkable object appears to me to be one of the ancient landmarks made by the Roman surveyors in Britain, serving uses analogous to the stones or circles of stones, and to the mounds..... The Whiteleaf Cross, near Prince’s Risborough, in Buckinghamshire, is a noble monument of this class, serving valuable purposes of geometric topography, some of which I long ago ascertained, and more await discovery. The connexion between the Giant of Cerne and the Whiteleaf Cross is this. A straight line drawn through both of them reaches from the island of Ouessant, or Ushant, at the north-west corner of Gaul... to the north (sic – mouth is a more logical reading – N.P.) of the Nene, one of the three rivers which flow into the bay on the east of Britain called “The Wash”. A line from the sea-mark, or pharos, now called “St. Catherine’s Chapel” near Abbotsbury ... if drawn to and passing though the Giant, comes out at or near Happisburg on the convex coast of Norfolk: an ancient Roman place of great importance....

.....(on the size of the giant)...these figures are obvious multiples of 60; and therefore the unit, which I understand from these indications, is a minute of a great circle; in other words the numbers indicate so many geographical miles, not itinerary miles, both which reckonings were used by the Roman engineers.....”

Thus, the size of the giant indicated, to Black, various points in Britain of what would now be called geomantic significance. However, the numerous scourings of hill figures makes the constancy of size from Roman times to 1872 most unlikely. Black’s earlier work, especially the calculation of the boundaries of Herefordshire, qualify him as the rediscoverer of ancient alinements.

THE LONG MAN OF WILMINGTON

Said to be the largest representation of a human figure visible on earth (the largest being in the terrestrial zodiax of Glastonbury, Pumpsaint, Kingston, Nuthampstead, Prescelly and Pendle, visible only from the air), the Long Man of Wilmington is cut on the face of Windover Hill, 3 miles to the north of Eastbourne in Sussex. Facing slightly to the east of north, the figure is carved on a 40° slope, consisting of the outline of a man holding a long stave in each hand. The Long Man is 231½ feet in height, holding staves 237½ ft. and 241½ ft. respectively, 115 ft. apart. The trench outlining the man is 2½ ft. in width.

Known also as the Lanky Man or the Lone Man, the present appearance dates only from 1873, when the Duke of Devonshire paid for the outline to be laid out in yellow bricks. It is known that the present “perspective” feet do not pre-date 1850, probably being the result of the 1873 job.

Until 1414, a Benedictine Priory was in existence at Wilmington, and, as legend has it, the monks cut the figure. More probably, the monks only kept the figure in good order, modifying it from a phallic figure like that at Cerne, where paganism was stronger. In legend, the Long Man was a giant who was killed by pilgrims on their way to Wilmington, and modern antiquaries and archaeologists have attributed to it numerous identities. Alfred Watkins, revealer of the Ley-line network, believed the Long Man to be an image of a Dodman who laid out the alinements between the sacred sites of antiquity. Others have seen the Long Man as Mohammed, St. Paul, Mercury, a Roman soldier, or a Saxon farm labourer. This latter conjecture is based upon the supposed observation of a rake end to the left stave and a scythe end to the right in a manuscript of 1779 by Burrell. Before 1873, the staves extended only to just above hand height on the figure.

{5} Flinders Petrie saw in the figure the Indian god Varuna opening the gates of heaven. Ken Clarke, the authority on pre-conquest stone crosses, has noted the resemblance of the figure to many representations on crosses of the dead warrior, in his coffin, grasping the sides of a rectangle. In these representations, the warrior’s weapons are often shown with him, and traces of what has been called a cock or other markings have been detected next to the Long Man. The legend of a giant killed in a rock-hurling match with another giant on Firle Beacon lends strength to this hypothesis. Probing with an iron bar along the lines joining each stave might reveal the rest of the hypothetical box.

The consensus of present archaeological opinion is that the figure is a representation of Woden, similar to that found in the Sutton Hoo burial mound in Suffolk, and on a golden buckle found in the Saxon cemetary at Finglesham, Kent. The White Horses of Pewsey, although 18th century and later, are in the area also associated with the worship of Woden, as the Wansdike (Wodnes Dic) runs through the Vale of Pewsey near to the figures.

A.A. Evans believed the Long Man to be a sidereal clock, a method of marking the equinoxes. According to Evans, the staves are not completely in sunshine until the equinox, and on certain festival days they catch the light at sunrise and sunset. Flinders Petrie tested the calculations of Evans and found the staves to be in full sunlight for 26 days before the Vernal Equinox, and there was no evidence for the latter conjecture. However, both Evans and Petrie were working on the post-1873 figure!

WATLINGTON WHITE MARK

The Watlington White Mark is found on the western face of Watlington Hill, pointing towards Christmas Common. It is cut on the same ridge of the Chiltern Hills in which, a few miles away, is cut the Bledlow Cross. The figure was re-cut and modified in 1764 by Edward Horne, having formerly been a phallic symbol like Weland’s Stoc. It now resembles the outline of an elegant eighteenth-century obelisk. It is 270 feet long and 36 feet wide.

WHITELEAF CROSS

This is a vey conspicuous hill-figure, having been seen from as far away as Headington Hall, Oxford, and from Uffington Castle (of white horse fame) thirty miles distant. On a slope varying from 25 to 45 degrees, it faces westwards over the Vale of Aylesbury. In height it is 246 feet and in width it is 400 feet. Originally, the cross was known as Weland’s Stoc, a vast phallic effigy, probably like the genitals of the Cerne giant. The base, tho now triangular, has always been known as the Globe, a memory of days before its modification According to H.J. Massingham, the cross was an astrological or phallic monument of the Bronze Age, equatable in date with the Cerne Giant, the Wilmington and Uffington Hill-figures. M. and C.H.B. Quennell in “Everyday life in the New Stone, Bronze and Early Iron Ages” state that a ley runs thru the Whiteleaf Cross in the sequence Harcourt Hill ... Whiteleaf Cross ... Mound on Pulpit Hall. Its position of great visibility, even from the site of another hill-figure, shows its great importance, and its connexion with alined sites amplifies this. Its size has altered greatly in the years since antiquarian interest has been taken in it. An engraving in Wise’s “Further Observations on the White Horse” (1742) show a smaller and more delicate figure. In the nineteenth century, {6} the philistines used to amuse themselves by sliding down the cross shaft in faggots, altho it was kept in good order by periodic scourings, at one time by the Oxford University colleges, later by the people of the neighbourhead, with a merry-making at each scouring. Sliding down hill figures has latterly become a pastime on the remains of Gogmagog excavated by T.C. Lethbridge at Wandlebury near Cambridge.

In 1826, George Robert, Earl of Buckinghamshire had the turf around the cross renewed, and the outlines re-cut. According to Flinders Petrie, the Whiteleaf Cross, the Bledlow Cross, the Wilmington Long Man and Stonehenge were all laid out using what he called the Etruscan Foot of 11.61 inches. When Petrie measured the base of the Whiteleaf Cross, he found it was 386 feet, 1 inch, the diameter of the main circle at Stonehenge, 400 Etruscan Feet. As Stonehenge predates Etruria by 1500 years, the Whiteleaf Cross was modified from a penis by Christian turf-cutters in the middle ages, and has been recorded to have increased in size in historic times due to repeated scourings, the theories of the celebrated archaeologist can be dismissed.

BLEDLOW CROSS

About a mile to the east of Chinnor, on the northwest side of Wain Hill can be found the Bledlow Cross, about 75 feet across with arms 17 feet wide. This is the third cross in the district, and may have been another phallic symbol like the White Mark and Whiteleaf Cross. Like the cross at Whiteleaf, it is close to the Icknield Way (as were the Wandlebury figures), and was possibly a geomantic marker for direction finding for travellers on the road as well as a phallic symbol. At present, it is nearly obliterated, being overgrown with brambles and grass.

DITCHLING CROSS

Cut in the turf of the South Downs above Plumpton Place, which is five miles to the northwest of Lewes in Sussex, the cross is said to have been cut by the monks of Southover to commemorate the Battle of Mount Harry (Lewes). In this battle, on May 14th, 1264, Simon de Montfort defeated King Henry III, and the cross was cut to remind travellers to pray for the souls of the fallen. The cross is about 100 feet across. However it is possible that the cross is of much earlier provenance.

UFFINGTON HORSE

Uffington Horse
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This figure resembles a cat or dragon more than a horse, but it had been known as a horse for many centuries. Its present appearance is attributed to the Iron Age, parallels having been drawn with disjointed horses on coins of immediate pre-Roman Britain. However, the ancient attribution as a horse, not a cat or dragon leads one to suspect that the appearance has not always been the same. Cut in the north escarpment of the Berkshire Downs overlooking the Icknield Way, the figure faces northwest on a slope of thirty degrees. At present, it is 365 feet in length, and can be seen from at least 20 miles away.

In 1738, the Reverend Francis Wise, an eighteenth century authority on hill-figures, said that the head, neck, tail and body of the horse consisted of one white line, as did the hind legs. “The horse at first view is enough to raise the imagination of every {7} spectator, being designed in so master-like a manner that it may defy the painter’s skill to give a more exact description of that animal”. Unlike the present stylized animal, it was naturalistic. W.C. Plenderleath, expert on the Wiltshire white horse states that at one time, the whole body consisted of turf outlined in chalk as in the case of the Cerne Abbas fiant. Bishop Pococke in 1757 also stated that “the green sod remains to form the body”. In the Modern British Traveller” (circa 1750), a naturalistic prancing horse is shown on the hillside.

In 1957, Guy Underwood dowsed the figure, discovering additional patterns which make up a whole horse. The reconstruction here is based upon aerial photographs and the work of Underwood, and approximates to the figure in the “Modern British Traveller”. In any case, the figure as it stands has been altered since 1813, when it was illustrated in Lyson’s “Britannia” so even greater alteration over the centuries is not unlikely. The fact that it was known as the White Horse in the reign of Henry II, not the White Cat or Dragon, which it would certainly have been, if its appearance had been the same as it is now, shows it had a more naturalsistic appearance, as in the reconstruction.

Whatever its original appearance, the White Horse was scoured regularly every seven years, the same magic seven at Cerne Abbas, with its formerly pagan fair, the “pastime”. This lasted two days, and boots and sideshows were set up. People from the surrounding villages attended to scour the hill-figures, and it was one of the conditions upon which the Lord of the Manor held his land that he should arrange the scouring and feed and entertain the scourers.

During the scouring, this folk-song was sung;–

The owl white horse wants settin to rights
And the squire hev promised good cheer
Zo we’ll gee un scrape to kip un in shape
An a’ll last for many a year.
(phonetic rendering of Berkshire dialect)

After 1857, the ‘pastime’ lapsed, and the scouring was done irregularly, until, in 1880, the horse was almost completely overgrown. In 1884 it was scoured and re-cut, and it is now cared for by the Government.

Near to the white horse is Dragon’s Hill, a sighting hill, where, legend has it, St. George killed the dragon. The horse is reputed to be moving slowly up hill, and to have its shoes made at Wayland’s Smithy, a megalithic monument half a mile away. In the Norse Legend, Wayland owned a white horse, and Wayland was also associated with what is now the Whiteleaf Cross. The white horse was traditionally connected with the Mother Goddess, and, at Wandlebury, appeared with her as a hill figure, showing the corpus of hill figures to belong to the same pre-christian religious system. A folk-lore connexion with King Alfred’s thorn tree and blowing stone may be a memory of their earlier geomantic connexion with the horse.

WESTBURY HORSE

Westbury Horse
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At Westbury (sometimes called Bratton), there is a celebrated figure of a white horse, dating from 1778. This was cut, obliterating an earlier figure, by a Mr. Gee, who was steward to Lord Abingdon. Mr. Gee took exception to the former horse, calling it a “grotesque creature”, and destroyed it.

The present horse, and thus also the former horse, is cut upon the steep (50 degrees) slope of Bratton Down, about two miles from Westbury. Facing west, it overlooks the Vale of Pewsey, formerly sacred to Woden. Above it is the iron-age hill fort of Bratton Camp. {8} The horse is therefore situated with the same proximity to an ancient earthwork as the figures at Wandlebury, Cerne Abbas, and Uffington. The original horse was short-legged and had a crescent attached to the tail, having a saddle-cloth with the crescent marks. Plenderleath believed the crescent strong evidence for great antiquity, as on many Iron Age coins, a crescent moon was shown floating above the horse. This also occurs at Wandlebury.

RED HORSE, TYSOE

Tysoe Horse This figure is now totally destroyed, having been obliterated by enclosure of the commons in 1798. Its form has recently been worked out (using aerial photography) by Graham Miller and Kenneth Carrdus (cover illustration).

Tysoe was the major shrine of Tiw in England. Tiw, the god of victory, who lost his hand in the Binding of the Fenris-wolf, was fated at Ragnarok, the last day, to fight with Garm, the Hound of Hel. The ‘red horse’, so called because the underlying soil was red, not white chalk, resembles a hound or wold rather than a horse. Near to the Sun Rising Inn, the Red Horse was 250 feet long and 200 feet in height. It was scoured annually, on each Palm Sunday, until enclosure destroyed it. In 1798, a smaller, second horse was cut by the landlord of the Sun Rising Inn, as, the scoyring and the fair was a profitable event. This, however, was destroyed in about 1920 by a landowner, Mr. Savory, who did not like visitors.

GOGMAGOG

Gogmagog hill figures, near Cambridge
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Various literary references and archaeological work have enabled us to get a good idea of the figures formerly at Wandlebury, near Cambridge. The earliest references to the figures was in Joseph Hall’s book “Mundus alter et idem”, being a legend that they were cut by Vandal prisoners transferred to Britain by the Emperor Probus. This is merely the first written reference, as a giant legend of the year 1200 exists in connexion with the site. The figures were found again by T.C. Lethbridge in the 1950s, and can be seen to have been the largest hill-figures yet known. There was a central figure of Magog, The Mother Goddess, riding on horses pulling a chariot. To the right was Wandil, demon of darkness, brandishing his sword. To the left was the sun-god, with a club, or wings.

The mother-goddess, Magog, is well represented in the area. A shiela-na-gig (female figure with prominent exposed genitals) is found on the church tower at Whittlesford nearby, along with a phallic figure. Another shiela-na-gig occurs in the nearby Royston Cave, and the area is covered in ‘Meg’s’ or ‘Maggot’s’ hills.

Excavation of the Gogmagog figures by T.C. Lethbridge The Magog figure was excavated (see Gogmagog, – etc, Cokaygne Press 1974), and was then left, unattended, by the owners of the site, the ‘Cambridge Preservation Society’. The obvious consequence of this deliberate neglect was the destruction of the figure by weathering, children playing on it and permitting young trees to become established upon it. The trees were also permitted to grow (i.e. the grass was not mown) where the other figures were found by sounding methods. Thus, the greatest of the hill-figures of England was re-discovered and than deliberately run down.

Wandlebury has its own “dragon hill” comparable with that at Uffington. Called Wormwood hill, (“Wyrm” being Anglo-Saxon for “dragon”) it is a tumulus, now obscured by woodland. It is interesting to note a biblical coincidence – Gog, Magog and Wormwood are all mentioned in the Revelation of St. John.

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PLYMOUTH HOE

The figure is no longer in existance, but was cut on Plymouth Hoe. Known as Hogmagog or Gogmagog, later records show the figures, earlier, one. In Carew’s “Survey of Cornwall’ (1602), it says “Upon the Haw at Plymouth, there is cut in the ground the portrayture of two men, the one bigger, the one lesser, with clubbes in their handes... ”. These were scoured regularly, and were known as Gogmagog and Corineus. Corineus was the lieutenant of Brutus the Trojan, who, in legend, founded Britain. The name Corineus comes more likely from the name Gogmagog for the other figure, a name found also at Wandlebury, this time without Corineus. The figures had clubs, like that at Cerne Abbas, and were probably also phallic, associated with Ogma-Sunface, the solar deity. The figures were destroyed in about 1750. There is a possibility that the ‘Corineus’ figure was once a female ‘Magog’, later altered.

OXFORD

At Shotover Hill, near Oxford, was a giant about which nothing is known save that it was scoured by the members of the University, and was destroyed in the 1640s.

CONCLUSION

England’s remaining ancient hill figures serve as a reminder to the modern age that, in ancient Britain was a civilization capable of precision scale drawing and its transfer, using organized labour, to a hillside. The hillside itself was special, in that it was selected by the geomancers in the priesthood for its unique properties of position and energies, bringing benefit to the surrounding earth, landscape, crops and society. The festivals associated with the scouring also served to re-activate the powers of the site, now lost.

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APPENDIX. LIST OF 18TH, 19TH AND 20TH CENTURY HILL-FIGURES

1764Watlington white mark (Oxfordshire) modified by Edward Horne.
1775Mormond horse (Aberdeen).
1778Westbury horse (Wiltshire) modified by Mr. Gee.
1780Oldbury horse (Wiltshire) made by Dr. Christopher Alsop.
1785Pewsey horse No. 1 (Wiltshire) made by Robert Pile.
1798Tysoe red horse destroyed by enclosure of commons.
1798Tysoe, second horse constructed.
1804Marlborough horse (Wiltshire) made by William Canning.
1812Alton Barnes horse (Wiltshire) made by Robert Pile.
1815Osmington horse (Dorset) made by troops stationed at Weymouth.
1838Hackpen horse (Wiltshire) made by Henry Eatwell.
1838Litlington horse No. 1 (Sussex) made by James Pagden.
1845Devizes horse (Wiltshire) made by the shoemakers of Devizes.
1857Kilburn horse (Yorkshire) made by Thomas Taylor.
1859Woolbury horse (Hampshire) re-cut, earliest reference – origin probably eighteenth century.
1863Broad Town horse (Wiltshire) re-cut, earliest reference – origin probably eighteenth century.
1868Ham Hill horse (Berkshire) made by Mr. Wright.
1870Mormond stag (Aberdeen) made by Mr. Gardner.
1902Wye crown (Kent) made by T.J. Young.
1916–18Fovant, Sutton Mandeville and Compton Chamberlayne badges (Wiltshire). A series of military badges cut in the chalk by the military personnel of the first world war. The badges comprised:
London Rifle Brigade
Rising Sun (Australia)
Map of Australia
Kangaroo
Devonshire Regiment
Post Office Rifles
YMCA
London Regiment. 6th Battalion
London Regiment. 7th Battalion
Royal Warwickshire Regiment
1917Bulford kiwi (Wiltshire) made by New Zealand troops.
1920sTysoe, second horse destroyed by Mr. Savory.
1922Canterbury. Buffs military badge (Kent) made by olover Mason.
1924Litlington horse No. 2 (Sussex).
1935Whipsnade lion (Bedfordshire) made by R.B. Brook-Greaves
1937Pewsey horse no. 2 (Wiltshire) made by Morris Marples
1950Fovant (Wiltshire) Wiltshire Regiment badge.
1951Fovant (Wiltshire) Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry badge.

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