The Cerne Abbas Giant

A 55-metre chalk giant, and the soil dating that surprised everyone

A naked man 55 metres tall cut into the turf of a steep hillside above Cerne Abbas in Dorset, his outline trenched and packed with chalk, raising a knotted club 37 metres long. Nobody knows who made him or when. No written record mentions him before the late 17th century, which led some scholars to date him to that century; antiquarians made him a Saxon god, others the Roman Hercules. Surveys show he has changed. He once held a cloak, perhaps an animal skin, over his outstretched left arm, and his famous erection appears to have been enlarged in a 1908 re-cut that merged it with the circle of his navel. Then luminescence dating of the soil suggested an origin between 700 and 1110, close to the 10th century founding of Cerne Abbey below him. Local folklore has long tied him to fertility. He belongs to the National Trust, which gave him a nose job in 1993 after erosion wore the old one away.