Early accounts Like several other chalk figures carved into the English countryside, the Cerne Abbas Giant is often thought of as an ancient creation but its written history cannot be traced back further than the late 17th century. Medieval sources refer to the hill on which the giant is located as Trendle Hill, in reference to the nearby Iron Age earthwork known as the Trendle. In contrast, there are documentary references to the 3,000 year-old
Uffington White Horse as far back as the late 11th century. The earliest known written reference is a 4November 1694 entry in the
churchwarden's accounts from St Mary's Church in Cerne Abbas, which reads "for repairing ye Giant, three shillings". In 1734, the
Bishop of Bristol noted and inquired about the giant during a
Canonical visitation to Cerne Abbas, while in 1738 the antiquarian
Francis Wise mentioned the giant in a letter. The bishop's account, as well as subsequent observations such as those of
William Stukeley, were discussed at meetings of the
Society of Antiquaries of London in 1764. Beginning in 1763 descriptions of the giant also began to appear in contemporary magazines, following a general increase in interest in "antiquities". The earliest known survey was published in the
Royal Magazine in September 1763. Derivative versions subsequently appeared in the October 1763
St James Chronicle, the July 1764 ''
Gentleman's Magazine and the 1764 edition of The Annual Register. In the early 1770s the antiquarian John Hutchins reviewed various previous accounts in his book The History and Antiquities of the County of Dorset'', published posthumously in 1774. A map referred to as the "1768 Survey Map of Cerne Abbas by Benjamin Pryce" is held at the Dorset History Centre, though a record at the National Archives notes there is evidence the map may date to the 1790s. By the following century the phallus was invariably omitted from depictions, either in line with the prevailing views on modesty at the time or as it had become grassed over; the figure seems to have become increasingly neglected and overgrown during the 19th century until in 1868 its owner
Lord Rivers arranged to have the giant restored "as near as possible to his original condition". File:cerne-abbas-giant-1764.jpg|1764, first known drawing from the ''Gentleman's Magazine'' with measurements, including the height of File:cerne-abbas-giant-1842.jpg|1842 drawing by the antiquary and editor
John Sydenham File:Cerne-abbas-giant-1892-plenderleath.jpg|1892 drawing by the author and antiquarian
William Plenderleath Interpretation 18th-century antiquarians were able to discover little about the figure's origin: Stukeley suggested that local people "know nothing more of [the giant] than a traditionary account of its being a deity of the ancient Britons". Several other local traditions have, however, been recorded, including that the giant was cut in 1539 at the time of the
dissolution of the monasteries as a "humiliating caricature" of Cerne Abbey's final
abbot Thomas Corton, who amongst other offences was accused of fathering children with a mistress. Hutchins, noting the apparent figure "748" then visible between the giant's feet, suggested that if this did not refer to the date of an earlier repair such as "1748", it could be a representation of Cenric, the son of
Cuthred of Wessex, who died in battle in 748: Arabic numerals however did not come widely into use in England until the 15th century. Another 18th-century writer dismissed it as "the amusement of idle people, and cut with little meaning, perhaps, as shepherds' boys strip off the turf on the Wiltshire plains."
Richard Pococke, in a 1754 account, noted the figure was called "the Giant, and Hele", while
Richard Gough, editor of the 1789 edition of
William Camden's 1637 work
Britannica, linked the giant with a supposed minor
Saxon deity named by Camden as "Hegle". Pococke had earlier noted that "[the giant] seems to be Hercules, or Strength and Fidelity". In recent times there have been three main theories concerning the age of the giant, and whom it might represent: • One, citing the lack of documentary evidence prior to the 1690s, argues that the giant was created in the 17th century, most likely by
Denzil Holles, 1st Baron Holles, who held the Cerne Abbas estate by right of his second wife Jane. J. H. Bettey was the first to suggest Holles could have cut the figure as a parody of
Oliver Cromwell, though a further tradition local to Cerne was that the giant was created by Holles' tenants as a lampoon aimed at Holles himself. • Another, based largely on an idea developed in the 1930s by archaeologist
Stuart Piggott, is that due to the giant's resemblance to Hercules, it is a creation of the
Romano-British culture, either as a direct depiction of the Roman figure or of a deity identified with him. • Another is that the giant is of earlier
Celtic origin, because it is stylistically similar to an image of the Celtic god
Nodens on a
skillet handle found at
Hod Hill, Dorset, dated to between 10 CE to 51 CE. It has been speculated that Holles could have intended the figure as a
parody of
Oliver Cromwell: while Holles, the
MP for
Dorchester and a leader of the
Presbyterian faction in Parliament, had been a key
Parliamentarian supporter during the
First English Civil War, he grew to personally despise Cromwell and attempted to have him impeached in 1644. Cromwell was sometimes mockingly referred to as "England's Hercules" by his enemies: under this interpretation, the club has been suggested to hint at Cromwell's military rule, and the phallus to mock his
Puritanism. In 1967 Kenneth Carrdus proposed that the Holles referred to in Hutchins' account was Denzil Holles' son
Francis, MP for Dorchester in 1679-80: he claimed that the figures and letters noted by Hutchins could be made to read "fh 1680", though was unable to find much other evidence to support this. The deepest archeological
horizon of the giant is 1 metre. Results of
optically stimulated luminescence testing of samples from this deepest level were published in 2021. Some of these samples support a construction date between and , suggesting the giant was first cut in the
late Anglo-Saxon period. As this date coincides with the founding of nearby Cerne Abbey, archaeologist
Alison Sheridan speculated that it may have been a challenge to the new religion from the still-pagan local inhabitants, although other scholars have noted that early medieval monks could equally have been responsible for the figure. Other samples, however, gave later dates ranging up to 1560; one possible explanation is that the giant may have first been cut in the late Saxon period, but then abandoned for several centuries. According to the National Trust, the grass is trimmed regularly and the giant is fully re-chalked every 25 years. Traditionally, the National Trust has relied on sheep from surrounding farms to
graze the site. However, in 2008 a lack of sheep, coupled with a wet spring causing extra plant growth, forced a re-chalking of the giant, with 17 tonnes of new chalk being poured in and tamped down by hand. In 2006, the National Trust carried out the first wildlife survey of the Cerne Abbas Giant, identifying wild flowers including the
green-winged orchid,
clustered bellflower and
autumn gentian, which are uncommon in England. In 1921 Walter Long of
Gillingham, Dorset, objected to the giant's nudity and conducted a campaign to either convert it to a simple nude, or to cover its supposed obscenity with a leaf. Long's protest gained some support, including that of two bishops, surveyed the giant, probably during the
First World War, and published his results in a
Royal Anthropological Institute paper in 1926. Petrie says he made 220 measurements, and records slight grooves across the neck, and from the shoulders down to the armpits. He also notes a row of pits suggesting the place of the spine. He concludes that the giant is very different from the
Long Man of Wilmington, and that minor grooves may have been added from having been repeatedly cleaned. In 1979, a
resistivity survey was carried out, and together with drill samples, confirmed the presence of the lion-skin. Another resistivity survey in 1995 also found evidence of a cloak and changes to the length of the phallus, but did not find evidence (as rumoured) of a severed head, horns, or symbols between the feet. In July 2020, preliminary results of a National Trust survey of snail shells unearthed at the site suggested the hill figure is "medieval or later". Snails dating only from the Roman period (brought from France as food) were not found at the site, while species first found in England from the 13th and 14th centuries were found in soil samples examined. In 2020 the National Trust commissioned a further survey, using
optically stimulated luminescence, and the results contradicted earlier research and theories. Samples from inside the deepest layers of the monument yielded a date range for construction of early medieval late
Anglo-Saxon period. The discovery was featured in Series 9, Episode 5 of the BBC series
Digging for Britain. A 2024 study proposed that the figure depicts Hercules and was created CE as a
muster station for
West Saxon armies to gather and that by the 11th-century, the figure was being reinterpreted as portraying
Saint Eadwold, by the monks at the Abbey. It is a scheduled monument in its own right. Antiquarian John Hutchins wrote in 1872 that "These remains are of very interesting character, and of considerable extent. They consist of circular and other earthworks, lines of defensive ramparts, an avenue, shallow excavations, and other indications of a British settlement." Unlike the giant, the earthworks belong to
Lord Digby, rather than the National Trust. Its purpose is unknown; the claim that it was the site of
maypole dancing, made by the former village
sexton in the late 19th century, was disputed by other villagers who located the maypole site elsewhere. ==Folklore==