Prehistoric sites in Dorset, England - Dorset Travel Information England > Dorset > Gazetteer of Prehistoric Sites Prehistoric Sites in Dorset An Iron Age Hillfort to the northwest of Abbotsbury village. The fort encloses an area of 4 acres, and within the double ramparts, the outlines of huts can still be seen. The location is superb, with views across Lyme Bay. Abbotsbury, Dorset, England Badbury Rings Set on a high rise of land within the Kingston Lacy estates is the Iron Age hillfort known as Badbury Rings. The site, now crowned with trees, is defended on three sides by a trio of concentric earthen ditches and ramparts. Badbury has been proposed as the site of Mons Badonicus (Mount Badon) - the great 6th century battle which saw a Romano-British force under King Arthur defeat invading Germanic tribes of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. Blandford Road, Wimborne, Dorset, England Heritage Rating: Cerne Abbas Giant A 180 foot high figure of a man bearing a club, carved into the chalk of the hillside.

It is not clear who carved the giant, and speculation has ranged from the Romans, to Celts, to Iron Age Britons. The figure's rather impressive physical endowments have made him the source of fertility practices; local folklore says that an infertile woman who spends the night within the figure will then be able to bear a child. Cerne Abbas, Near Dorchester, Dorset, England Heritage Rating: Kingston Russell Stone Circle The Kingston Russell stone circle dates to the late Neolithic or early Bronze Age. The circle is composed of 18 stones, all fallen. The location is wonderful; the stone circle is set on a chalk hill top with wide-ranging views towards the sea and nearby Abbotsbury village. Abbotsbury, Dorset, England, DT3 4JX Heritage Rating: A fascinating historic site consisting of a ruined medieval church standing within the remains of a Neolithic henge earthwork. The juxtaposition of the Norman church and the prehistoric henge monument represents a quite striking combination of Christian and pre-Christian history.

Lumber Lane, Knowlton, Dorset, England Heritage Rating: Maiden Castle One of the most intriguing ancient sites in England, Maiden Castle is a huge pre-Roman fortress, with high earthen banks enclosing a hilltop site of 45 acres. The fort was occupied in the Bronze Age, but the 'castle' was extended to its current dimensions in the 1st century BC. In 43 AD the local Celtic tribes used Maiden Castle to make their futile last stand against the invading Roman Army. Dorchester, Dorset, England, DT2 9PP Heritage Rating: A long barrow that really is *long*! Pimperne barrow stretches to 330 feet in length, rises to 10 feet high, and is about 90 feet wide at its widest point. The barrow can be roughly dated to 3500-4000 BC. Pimperne, Dorset, England St Augustine's Well, Cerne Abbas Near the ruins of Cerne Abbey is a holy well said to have bee founded by St Augustine in the early 6th century. St Edwold later set up a hermitage there.

The well is said to heal eye problems and infertility. off Abbey Street, Cerne Abbas, Dorset, England Heritage Rating: The Nine Stones Nine Stones is a small stone circle set in a woodland glade immediately west of Winterbourne Abbas village. As the name suggests, the circle is composed of nine stones. It was constructed in the late Neolithic or early Bronze Age, around 2000 BCE. A35, Winterbourne Abbas, Dorset, England, DT2 9LX Heritage Rating: Winterbourne Poor Lot Barrows A large cluster of 44 Bronze Age burial mounds is spread out on either side of the A35 a mile west of Winterbourne Abbas. The site is so large that the grouping of barrows has been described as a Bronze Age cemetery. What is fascinating about the site is that so many different types of barrows are clustered so close together. Here you will find disc barrows, bell barrows, bowl barrows, pond barrows, and the remains of what may be a hut circle.

Winterbourne Abbas, Dorset, England, DT2 9XD Heritage Rating: 1 OF 16 CHARMING PROPERTIES RECENTLY DEVELOPED TO A HIGH STANDARD A STROLL FROM THE POPULAR WORLD HERITAGE JURASSIC COASTLINE. SHORT BREAKS ONLY AVAILABLE DURING OFF PEAK WEEKS. PLEASE CALL … Sleeps 6 Southover Farm House was refurbished in 2005 to a high standard and with the aim of making people view it as a holiday home, rather than a holiday let. … Sleeps 15 New Inn Situated in the peaceful village of West Knighton, New Inn - Dorchester is a former 16th-century coaching inn. It blends original features with modern attributes such as free Wi-Fi and free on-site parking. The New Inn is ideal for both leisure and business guests offering a peaceful environment for … more >> More hotels in Dorset >> Manor Hotel This ideally located 16th Century Manor House is only 300 meters from Chesil Beach and the South West coastal path. Family run serving homemade food real Ales and great wines. Beer garden & terrace overlooking the Sea. Large free car park.

The … more >> More hotels in Dorset >> The Top Ten Geoglyphs - UK & The World - Britain ExplorerBritain Explorer Up to 20 cm / ploughed soil THE MARREE MAN (STUART'S GIANT) South Australia, Australia - C. 1998 The most recently discovered anthropomorphic (human-like) geoglyph is the Marree Man of Finnis Springs, in the 'outback' of central South Australia. It is generally considered to be a recently created but fairly accurate representation of an Aboriginal hunter from the Pitjantjatjara tribe holding a throwing stick. The scale of the figure is enormous and is approximately 2,600 meters in length (not the 4.2 kilometres stated on Wikipedia). It was apparently discovered on the 26th June 1998 by aircraft charter pilot Mr Trec Smith and caused a brief but worldwide sensation. It is believed to have been created by earth moving machinery, possibly a tractor and plough, coordinated by GPS navigational aids. As with almost all other geoglyphs it is surrounded by mystery and even 15 years after its discovery nobody seems to know for certain who made it or why.

Allegedly a sealed bottle was discovered near the site containing a note stating that the figure was 'Stuart's Giant' along with a small American flag and a reference to the Branch Davidian Cult. Another version of the story claims that the name Stuart's Giant was first provided in an anonymous press release that referred to John McDouall Stuart a famous Australian explorer who lived between 1815 and 1886 AD. Other finds near the area linked the geoglyph to a publicity stunt for the 2000 Sydney Summer Olympics. The reality is that even though the creation of the Marree Man is a recent event it is already surrounded in confusion, theorising and misrepresented information. The appearance of the figure also caused significant controversy when local politicians and aboriginal leaders who condemned the artwork as landscape graffiti, environmental vandalism and even the desecration of sacred land. Even though there were many appeals to have the geoglyph enhanced and made a permanent feature, the area was closed to tourists and the geoglyph is now slowly eroding away. It is still very faintly visible on Google Earth satellite images from 2006.

At the time of the discovery it was also claimed that only one track entered and exited the area and that no footprints or signs of surveying were ever found. Other claims state that wooden pegs and markers were located along the lines. A buried plaque was located at the site which stated" In memory of the land they once knew". An anonymous fax sent in 1999 claimed that the clues to the creator of the giant figure could be found near the Cerne Abbas Giant, another naked geoglyph in Dorset England. This never materialised. The creators of the Marree Man have never been formally identified although many people believe it is the work of Bardius Goldberg a somewhat wild artist who died in 2002 from dental septicaemia caused by a bar fight. PHOTO CREDITS With the exception of the schematic of the Amazon Geoglyphs, The Cerne Abbas Giant and the artists outline of the Marree Man, all images have been sourced from Wikimedia Commons. Credits are noted as follows: 1. NASA, 2. CH Images, 3. Charles Gadbois, 4. Curious Britain, 5. Colegota, 6. Unreferenced, 7.

Unreferenced, 8. Curious Britain, 9. P Brophy, 10. Curious Britain SEARCH THE BLOG Hill figure | Project Gutenberg Self-Publishing - eBooks | Read eBooks online Cerne Abbas Giant chalk figure, near the village of Cerne Abbas in Dorset , England. Made by a turf-cut. A hill figure is a large visual representation created by cutting into a steep hillside and revealing the underlying geology. It is a type of geoglyph usually designed to be seen from afar rather than above. In some cases trenches are dug and rubble made from material brighter than the natural bedrock is placed into them. The new material is often chalk , a soft and white form of limestone , leading to the alternative name of chalk figure for this form of art. Ancient hill figures cut in grass are especially a phenomenon in England : examples include the Cerne Abbas Giant , the Uffington White Horse , the Long Man of Wilmington , as well as the "lost" carvings at Cambridge , Oxford and Plymouth Hoe . From the 18th century onwards, many further ones were added.

Contents External links 15 History The creation of hill figures has been practised since prehistory and can include human and animal forms (cutting horses is known, as well as more abstract symbols and, in the modern era, advertising brands. The reasons for the creation for the figures are varied and obscure. The Uffington Horse probably held political significance, since the figure dominates the valley below. It probably dates to the British Iron Age since coins have been found exhibiting the symbol. The Cerne Abbas Giant might have been a work of political satire .[1] Wiltshire is a county with a large number of White Horses; 14 have been recorded.[2] The figures are usually created by the cutting away of the top layer of relatively poor soil on suitable hillsides. This exposes the white chalk beneath, which contrasts well with the short green hill grass, and the image is clearly visible for a considerable distance. Despite most of the figures being of great age, many are relatively new.

Devizes in Wiltshire created a large white horse for the 2000 Millennium celebrations and in October 2009 celebrated this with an aerial photo of volunteers making the figure 10 for an aerial photo.[3] Figures must be maintained to remain visible, and local people often work regularly to restore or maintain a local landmark, though two cuttings of military badges at Sutton Mandeville , Wiltshire, are becoming lost. A map of Australia at Compton Chamberlayne , Wiltshire, was lost in 2005. Similar pictures exist elsewhere in the world, notably the far larger Nazca Lines in Peru , which are on flat land but visible from hills in the area. These were made in desert terrain, however, not on grassy hillsides and so have not become overgrown, and thus have survived much longer without maintenance.

"Gigantotomy" and "Leucippotomy" In 1949, Morris Marples invented the words "leucippotomy" and "gigantotomy".[4][5] Morris wrote that he "half-humorously ventured to use leucippotomy for the cutting of white horses and gigantotomy for the cutting of giants on rare occasions".[6] Neither word appears in the Oxford English Dictionary , and rarely in the popular press.[7] Construction Until recently, there were only three used ways to construct white hill figures. The stripping method, where the soil is thin, the turf, or soil, is stripped away to expose the chalk underneath. To carve horses this way produces quick results but the horse would need very regular maintenance, as it would become easily overgrown. This was a practice for hill figures but not as much horses. The Laverstock Panda in Laverstock near Salisbury , Wiltshire was constructed this way in 1968 and is now lost. Traces of figures of this type are not usually found after the figure is overgrown. The method known as covering is the most simple way to construct, done by placing rocks on top of the turf.

This method is normally used when there is no underlying chalk, the chalk is deep or if the figure needs to be constructed quickly (perhaps due to tools not being available). The maintenance for these figures is very high. There are several examples done like this, such as the Woolbury White Horse in Hampshire . This method leaves no trace of the figures existence when overgrown, as is the case of the lost Fovant Badges . The trenching method, which is by far the most common method of hill figure construction. The underlying chalk where some white horses are constructed is not near the surface so a trench is dug and chalk from another site is used to fill the trench. The Uffington White Horse , the most famous white horse worldwide, is the prime example of this method. This was the method originally to be used for the modern Devizes White Horse . This method is invasive in the hillside and allows traces of the figure to be seen even when the figure has been overgrown for many years, an example being the original Devizes White Horse, cut in 1845, lost sometime in the mid 20th century, but traces of it can still be seen.

The biggest problem for white horses and other hill figures is natural vegetation to cover the figures. In the case of chalk figures, natural vegetation encroaches from the edges and can grow on soil washed onto the figure by rain. This can cover a white horse quickly. Water erosion can also be a problem for very steep and gentle slopes, because the rain can wash the chalk off the horse or soil onto the horse. Larger horses are more susceptible to this. This can have two effects, if chalk is washed off the horse, the horse gradually creeps down the slope, or if soil is washed onto the horse, it collects onto the lower edges and the horse actually gradually climbs up the slope. A solution is to provide adequate drainage in order to prevent such damage, either using run off drains, which can be found on Uffington White Horse , or a french ditch . Human figures While presumed to be of prehistoric origin, surviving examples may have been created only within the last four hundred years.[8] Of these giants only two survive: one near the village of Cerne Abbas , to the north of Dorchester , in Dorset and one at Wilmington, Long Man civil parish in the Wealden District of East Sussex .

Examples located at Oxford , Cambridge , and on Plymouth Hoe can no longer be seen with the naked eye.[8][9][10] The King George III) but is not considered an example of gigantotomy due to the name of the figure referring to the horse. Cerne Abbas Giant The Cerne Abbas Giant , also referred to as the "Rude Man" or the "Rude Giant", is a hill figure of a giant naked man 180 ft (55 m) high, 167 ft (51 m) wide[1] figure is carved into the side of a steep hill, and is best viewed from the opposite side of the valley or from the air. The carving is formed by a trench 12 in (30 cm) wide,[1] and about the same depth, which has been cut through grass and earth into the underlying chalk . In his right hand the giant holds a knobbled club 120 ft (37 m) in length.[1] Its history cannot be traced back further than the late 17th century, making an origin during the Celtic , Roman or even Early Medieval periods difficult to prove.

Above and to the right of the Giant's head is an earthwork known as the "Trendle", or "Frying Pan". Medieval writings refer to this location as "Trendle Hill", but make no mention of the giant, leading to the conclusion that it was probably only carved about 400 years ago. In contrast, the Uffington White Horse — an unquestionably prehistoric hill figure on the Berkshire Downs — was noticed and recorded by medieval authors.[1][11] In 2008, overgrowth forced a re-chalking of the giant,[12] with 17 tonnes of new chalk being poured in and tamped down by hand.[13] Long Man of Wilmington The Long Man of Wilmington seen from a distance The Long Man of Wilmington is a located on one of the steep slopes of Windover Hill, six miles (9.6 km) northwest of Eastbourne . The figure is 227 feet (69 m) tall and designed to look in proportion when viewed from below, and is shown holding two staves. The earliest record was made by the surveyor John Rowley in the year 1710.

This drawing suggests that the original figure was a shadow or indentation in the grass, rather than the solid outline of a human figure. The staves were not depicted as a rake and scythe as was once thought, and the head was a helmet shape. Sir William Borrow's drawing of 1766 shows the figure holding a rake and a scythe, both shorter than the staves.[14] Before 1874, the Long Man's outline was only visible in certain light conditions as a different shade in the hillside grass, or after a light fall of snow. In that year an antiquarian marked out the outline with yellow bricks, later cemented together.

It has been claimed that the 'restoration' process distorted the position of the feet, an assertion backed up by several who had been familiar with the figure before 1874, and also by later resistivity surveys.[15] It has also been suggested that it removed the Long Man's genitalia, though there is no historical or archaeological evidence which supports that claim.[14][16] A wide range of dates of origin have been proposed for the Long Man, but more recent archaeological work done by the University of Reading suggests that the figure dates from the 16th or 17th century AD.[17] Plymouth Hoe giants Until the early 17th century large outline images of the two giants, perhaps Gog and Magog (or Goemagot and Corineus ) had for a long time been cut into the turf of Plymouth Hoe exposing the white limestone beneath.[18] An early and explicit reference was made to them by Richard Carew in 1602.[19] At one time these figures were periodically re-cut and cleaned but no trace of them remains today.[18][20] Gog Magog Hills The dowser and archaeologist Thomas Charles Lethbridge claimed to have

 discovered a group of three hidden chalk carvings in the Gog Magog Hills about three miles south of Cambridge .

He described these figures buried under the surface of the hills as representing a sun god , a moon goddess and a war god . This alleged discovery was described at length in his book Gogmagog: The Buried gods but is not widely accepted.[21] Firle Corn Firle Corn in Firle , Sussex is a nearly-lost hill figure whose existence can be seen by infrared photography . Now looking more like a small ear of corn or a strange weapon than a human figure, there is a legend suggesting that a giant called Gill was once cut on this same hill and that he was considered an adversary of the Long Man of Wilmington not far away.[22] According to one story, the giant on Firle Beacon threw his hammer at the Wilmington giant and killed him, and that the figure on the hillside marks the place where his body fell.[23] Homer Simpson As a publicity stunt for the opening of The Simpsons Movie on 16 July 2007, a giant Homer Simpson brandishing a doughnut was outlined in water-based biodegradable paint to the left of the Cerne Abbas Giant.

This act angered local neopagans , who pledged to perform "rain magic" to wash the figure away.[24][25] Horse figures There are 16 known white horse hill figures in the UK, or 17 including the painted one at Cleadon Hills . The Luzley White Horse, cut in the 1980s, is not completely lost, as some of it can still be seen, although it is no longer maintained. Eight of the current white horses, and at least five of the lost figures, are in Wiltshire. The white horse is now generally considered a symbol of Wiltshire. An 1872 sketch of the Cherhill White Horse was later featured in the unofficial flag of Wiltshire, the White Horse Flag . It was designed after its designer, Chrys Fear, decided the white horse symbol had a stronger connection to Wiltshire than the Great Bustard on the official flag. Additionally, for the third millennium, it was proposed that a white horse should feature on one of the surrounding hills in Devizes (It became the Devizes Millennium White Horse ).

Smaller white horses now feature in Wiltshire, such as a replica of the Devizes White Horse in a Devizes primary school and two proposed white horses to feature on a roundabout in Marlborough (both towns already have larger white horses.) Liddington Hill near Swindon is the latest location in Wiltshire to have a proposed white horse, in the early 2000s, although the idea was abandoned. List of UK figures If the names of the horses are not capitalised, it is because these are an adopted nickname, rather than a general consensus on its name or the official name. Current figures Late 1960s N/A The horses in Cockington Green, Georgia and Juárez are all based on the style of or direct copies of the Uffington White Horse. Lost figures Since hill figures must be maintained by the removal of regrown turf, only those that motivate the local populace to look after them survive. Surviving ancient figures all have an associated fair or ceremony that involves maintaining them. Unmaintained figures gradually fade away.[26] Firle Corn at Firle Beacon , Sussex could be a lost figure. Its existence is suggested by infrared photography .

If it is a lost figure, its age is uncertain, and unlikely prehistoric in origin, as only one figure in the UK has been shown to be of this age, the Uffington White Horse . There have been horses at Devizes and Pewsey , both in Wiltshire, that have been lost but replaced by new ones in the 20th century.[26] According to the Hillfigure Homepage, there have been 19 military badges at Fovant that have been lost, although a ' YMCA ' badge and a map of Australia at Compton Chamberlayne have also become lost recently. Influence on other art forms The white horses of Wiltshire, of which there are currently nine, have inspired other sculptures in the county.

Julive Livsey's sculpture White Horse Pacified (1987) in Shaw, Swindon was inspired by the white horses.[27] Furthermore, Charlotte Moreton created the steel sculpture White Horse (2010) for Solstice Park, Amesbury , taking influence from the white horses.[28] A roundabout in Westbury, which features views of Westbury White Horse, features a canvas of the horse, with the horse also featuring in a mosaic in the town. When the county was choosing an official flag in 2006–07, a suggested nominee was the " White Horse Flag ", featuring Cherhill White Horse. The Town Flag of Pewsey , registered in September 2014, features the Pewsey White Horse at its centre.

Some of the most significant figures England In England there are at least fifty landscape figures, the majority of which are in the south.[29] (The phrase "forensic photo", relating to a few lost figures, refers to photos taken with appropriate filters, in optimum lighting, often at times of severe drought or snow covering, to bring out features no longer normally visible.) The Westbury White Horse is mentioned in the novel The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje , but was not featured in the film of the novel . The Undying Monster by Jessie Douglas Kerruish Hill figures in film Alton Barnes White Horse features in the music video for Staying Out for the Summer by Dodgy Cherhill White Horse features in the music video for Doctorin' the Tardis by The Timelords Uffington White Horse (in animated form) features in the music video for Sonnet by The Verve Westbury White Horse features in the music video for Breathe by Midge Ure (alongside a temporary figure of the sun) See also · June 2, 2016 · "Who is this mysterious naked man carved into the green folds of Windover Hill on the South Downs in East Sussex?

No-one knows for sure who he represents or ho...w long he’s been there. His very existence offers up more questions than there are answers. It is obvious that the people who originally etched him into this steep, north-facing hillside did so for some specific reason; his form and placement are not random. He is known as the Long Man of Wilmington and now looked after by the Sussex Archaeological Society. At 230ft from head to toe he is the second largest hill figure in the world after the 393 feet high Giant of Atacama, in Chile. But for much of his historical life he was no more than an indentation in the hillside grass, only visible after a light fall of snow in winter and picked out by a different shade of green in summer, earning him an alternative name of Green Man. This was an apt title that perfectly fitted during WW2 when he was painted green, wiping him out as a landmark that could have been used by enemy aircraft. The earliest known drawing of the Long Man is a rough sketch by surveyor John Rowley in 1710, which showed that the figure once had a face, crude helmet and outurned feet.

There was no indication as to the sex, but this region, known as Dicker Country, was special to Strict Baptists, who may well have wanted to erase any indication of sexuality. In 1873/4 a group of volunteers, led by the vicar of Glynde, Reverend William de St Croix, worked to save the Long Man from deterioration by marking the indistinct outline more clearly with yellow bricks cemented together. The Sussex Archaeological Society stated, ‘Despite popular legend there is no evidence, historical or archaeological, to suggest that prudish Victorians robbed him of his manhood.’ The outline that we see today differs from previous forms. The current design holds a stave in each hand, or ‘skis, so he can ski down the hill when it snows,’ as one joker put it. Over the years, previous ‘restoration,’ had varied his implement selection from a scythe blade, flail and rake to a sword and shepherd’s crook. His feet, too have been moved about a bit, there is evidence that he has been going left, right and at one time forward. Other parts of his anatomy have been interfered with over the years.

In 1939 it was reported that, ‘Five local youths had done wilful damage to this very ancient monument, to which they pleaded guilty at Hailsham Police Court. Their destructive idea led them to take out some of the bricks…..and throw them downhill. Happily, they were observed. …. each was ordered to pay thirty shillings of the total damage estimated at £7.10s.’ On the 1st May 2002, the Long Man Morris Dancers arrived at the site to perform their traditional May Day dance at the foot of the figure. In the dawn light they discovered that pranksters had hauled up a football pitch marker and cheekily used it to decorate the figure with an oversized willy, causing laughing tourists to photograph him in his new, well-endowed glory and one local newspaper to head a report, ‘The Long Man Gets Longer.’ Norman Hopson, then Squire of the Long Man Morris Men said, ‘We went into our first dance and then we noticed it, the lads were laughing so much we had to stop.

I don’t know who would have done such a thing, but it certainly wasn’t us.’ An anonymous writer commented on the Internet, ‘Personally, I think it was an alien crop circle gone wrong.’ White Witch Kevin Carlyon angrily remarked, ‘I am up in arms over this because I have always said the Long Man was a woman. I am going to put a spell on whoever did this, but I would not be surprised if there were quite a few naughty romps at the Long Man on this May Day night.’ In 2007, TV celebrities Trinny and Susanna held an ‘Undress the Nation’ programme here and changed the Long Man into a Long Woman by using the bodies of 100 women to add pigtails, breasts and hips.

Although ITV were given permission to film there from the Sussex Archaeological Society, and took ‘the utmost care to protect this historical site,’ local Druid Greg Draven protested about the filming, and the Druid Society said, ‘This had dishonoured an ancient pagan site of worship.’ A local folk legend listed by the Society of Ley Hunters records that a downland shepherd could recall the Long Man having a giantess girlfriend who lay on his right; locals dubbed them Adam and Eve, but she has long since disappeared. Interestingly, a 17th century plaque discovered in Torslunda, Sweden, shows two figures in combat. The form on the left, carrying a stave in each hand, bears some passing resemblance to the Long Man and was identified as Beowulf, a Nordic hero. The second figure was named as Grendel, a she-wolf, who, according to an old Anglo-Saxon epic poem, fought with Beowulf. Was the Wilmington Giant a representation of Beowulf and was Grendel the figure that vanished?

Many Sussex people believe ‘their’ giant is prehistoric and lies on a sacred site; there are indications that this area was of some importance, with a nearby Neolithic barrow cemetery, and, the discovery of a large hoard of axe heads supported the evidence of a bronze foundry. But there are endless theories about the presence of the Long Man on Windover Hill; was he of Roman origin, cut by soldiers of the Second Legion in the 4th century A.D. who were camped in the district? Here again there is a striking resemblance between the Long Man and the design on the reverse side of some Roman coins bearing the heads of Vetranius, Constantius ii and Constantius Gallus. Was he a god wearing a winged helmet? Was he once a depiction of a Saxon haymaker when he was holding a hay rake and a scythe? Is he in any way associated with the smaller sized, attention arresting ‘Rude Man of Cerne,’ a similar hill figure near Dorchester that has an exceptionally large willy? Although lacking evidence that he is definitely male, the Wilmington Giant has a long and constant association with the primitive cult of fertility.

This view still holds strong today; many childless couples hope that a romp in the grass inside the boundary of the giant’s outline will give them the longed for baby. One young mother commented, ‘I only went up there to say a prayer,’ and, pointing to her new offspring, ‘look what happened.’ Some modern British pagans and heathens perform annual fertility rites within the figure’s perimeter and the locals have got used to seeing naked figures wandering around the hillside or indulging in sex sessions in the grass. Another local tale suggests that this is a depiction of a living giant who met his death at this site. He seems to have perished in a variety of different ways; tripping and breaking his neck, murdered by pilgrims, or, being on the receiving end of a dinner thrown at him by a shepherd! A popular far-fetched story records that there were two giants; one lived at Windover Hill, the other three miles away, on Firle Beacon. The tale goes that they quarrelled, and ended up throwing large boulders at each other. Indentations on the hill are said to be craters formed by the hurled missiles. The Firle Giant finally scored a hit, killing the Windover Giant.

The locals carved an outline around his huge corpse and then buried him in the long barrow that lies above the giant’s head. There is no record of how they got his enormous body into an equally enormous grave! Exaggerated tales suggest he lies in a solid gold coffin surrounded by priceless treasures. Folklore abounds that the Long Man may have alien connections. Was there any relationship between the figure and two sighting in the 1990’s of space craft over the area and the appearance of nearby crop circles? Or was the presumed attraction not the Giant but an ‘official’ ley line, a long strip of energy, running through the ground SSW-NNE that passes right underneath the carving. Or was the Long Man laid out on this spot, to confirm a macabre theory that this was a sacrificial site? Was there a custom held here of crowding victims into human shaped, large wicker and brushwood enclosures, which were then set alight? On such a steep slope the flames would have roared up the hill. Because of an acoustic anomaly caused by the curved shape of the hill, the dying screams of the burning captives would have resounded around this natural amphitheatre. A more practical suggestion came from A.

Baines, from Hastings, writing in a local magazine, ‘ The eighteenth century was notorious for freak landscape gardening,, artificial ruins, gazebos, towers erected for no particular purpose, except to satisfy the whim of builders. …if truth were known, it would be revealed as a result of a whim of some former owner of the hill, who had a taste for the artificial landscape gardening of his day and rather more eccentricity than most of his contemporaries in the art of decorative gardening.’ Still searching for some answers, Professor Martin Bell of Reading University, and a group of local volunteers from the Sussex Archaeological Society, carried out excavations at the site in 2003. Their efforts were featured in BBC 2 programme, ‘Figures in the Chalk,’ from the series ‘Landscape Mysteries,’ presented by Aubrey Manning. The team studied the area, picked over hundreds of pieces of flint, pottery and brick and came to the conclusion that the Long Man was cut into the hillside in the 16th century, during a time of social conflict and civil war.

But by whom and for what reason?" HILL FIGURES UK BEFORE 1900 HILL FIGURES UK BEFORE 1900 HILL FIGURES UK BEFORE 1900 A hill figure is a large visual representation created by cutting into a steep hillside and revealing the underlying geology. It is a type of geoglyph usually designed to be seen from afar rather than above. In some cases trenches are dug and rubble made from material brighter than the natural bedrock is placed into them. The new material is often chalk, a soft and white form of limestone, leading to the alternative name of chalk figure for this form of art. History The creation of hill figures has been practised since prehistory and can include human and animal forms. The reasons for the creation for the figures are varied and obscure. The Uffington Horse probably held political significance, since the figure dominates the valley below. It probably dates to the British Iron Age since coins have been found exhibiting the symbol. Wiltshire is a county with a large number of White Horse figures; 14 have been recorded. The figures are usually created by the cutting away of the top layer of relatively poor soil on suitable hillsides.

This exposes the white chalk beneath, which contrasts well with the short green hill grass, and the image is clearly visible for a considerable distance. Human Figures While presumed to be of prehistoric origin, surviving examples may have been created only within the last four hundred years.Of these figures of giants only two survive: one near the village of Cerne Abbas, to the north of Dorchester, in Dorset and one at Wilmington, Long Man civil parish in the Wealden District of East Sussex. Examples located at Oxford, Cambridge, and on Plymouth Hoe can no longer be seen with the naked eye. Cerne Abbas Giant The Cerne Abbas Giant, also referred to as the "Rude Man" or the "Rude Giant", is a hill figure of a giant naked man 180 ft (55 m) high, 167 ft (51 m) widefigure is carved into the side of a steep hill, and is best viewed from the opposite side of the valley or from the air. The carving is formed by a trench 12 in (30 cm) wide,and about the same depth, which has been cut through grass and earth into the underlying chalk.

In his right hand the giant holds a knobbled club 120 ft (37 m) in length. Its history cannot be traced back further than the late 17th century, making an origin during the Celtic, Roman or even Early Medieval periods difficult to prove. Above and to the right of the Giant's head is an earthwork known as the "Trendle", or "Frying Pan". Medieval writings refer to this location as "Trendle Hill", but make no mention of the giant, leading to the conclusion that it was probably only carved about 400 years ago. Long Man of Wilmington The Long Man of Wilmington is a located on one of the steep slopes of Windover Hill, six miles (9.6 km) northwest of Eastbourne. The figure is 227 feet (69 m) tall and designed to look in proportion when viewed from below, and is shown holding two staves. The earliest record was made by the surveyor John Rowley in the year 1710. This drawing suggests that the original figure was a shadow or indentation in the grass, rather than the solid outline of a human figure.

The staves were not depicted as a rake and scythe as was once thought, and the head was a helmet shape. Sir William Borrow's drawing of 1766 shows the figure holding a rake and a scythe, both shorter than the staves. Before 1874, the Long Man's outline was only visible in certain light conditions as a different shade in the hillside grass, or after a light fall of snow. In that year an antiquarian marked out the outline with yellow bricks, later cemented together. It has been claimed that the 'restoration' process distorted the position of the feet, an assertion backed up by several who had been familiar with the figure before 1874, and also by later resistivity surveys.It has also been suggested that it removed the Long Man's genitalia, though there is no historical or archaeological evidence which supports that claim.A wide range of dates of origin have been proposed for the Long Man, but more recent archaeological work done by the University of Reading suggests that the figure dates from the 16th or 17th century AD.

Plymouth Hoe giants Until the early 17th century large outline images of the two giants, perhaps Gog and Magog (or Goemagot and Corineus) had for a long time been cut into the turf of Plymouth Hoe exposing the white limestone beneath. An early and explicit reference was made to them by Richard Carew in 1602. At one time these figures were periodically re-cut and cleaned but no trace of them remains today. Gog Magog Hills The Wandlebury Enigma refers to a number of suggested hypotheses about the purpose, function and decoration of Wandlebury Hill. The first is the suggestion that an ancient hill figure had once been carved into the side of Wandlebury Hill, similar to the Cerne Abbas Giant. This was thought to have been overgrown or effaced in the 18th century. The figure was first recorded by Bishop Joseph Hall in 1605 and later by others including William Cole and John Layer. Investigation was carried out in 1954 by Thomas Charles Lethbridge, an archaeologist and parapsychologist.

He found small lumps of chalk to the South of the hill and proceeded to survey the area with a sounding bar, probing areas of soft ground and disturbed chalk. By placing markers he was able to draw out the pattern of what he claimed were 3 hill figures picturing ancient British deities - A horse Goddess (Magog or Epona), a Sun God (Gog, Bel, Belinus or Lucifer) and a warrior figure with sword and shield. The Times reported on Lethbridge's discovery as a "previously lost, three thousand-year-old hill-figure". A later article about Lethbridge's efforts was written by W.A. Clark in 1997 which did not confirm his claims, nor did magnometer and resistivity meter testing. This suggestion was dismissed by Professor Glyn Daniel who commented that Lethbridge had not found any real antiquities but was "probably confusing geological features".A report by the Council for British Archaeology concluded that the 'hollows' were caused by common geological processes. Firle Corn Firle Corn in Firle, Sussex is a nearly-lost hill figure whose existence can be seen by infrared photography.

Now looking more like a small ear of corn or a strange weapon than a human figure, there is a legend suggesting that a giant called Gill was once cut on this same hill and that he was considered an adversary of the Long Man of Wilmington not far away. According to one story, the giant on Firle Beacon threw his hammer at the Wilmington giant and killed him, and that the figure on the hillside marks the place where his body fell. Horse Figures Cerne Abbas Giant Hill Figure : The Megalithic Portal and Megalith Map: External Links: Image: Cerne Abbas Giant submitted by theCaptain Hill Figure in Dorset. The Cerne Abbas Giant is a hill-figure cut into the turf and underlying bedrock to expose a white chalk outline. He is almost 60 metres tall, and brandishes a club 36 metres long. His body is outlined and detailed by narrow trenches no more than 0.6 metres wide, and his condition has been maintained by periodic scouring by local people - an activity traditionally separated by long intervals. The antiquity of the Giant is still a topic of debate.

The various interpretations suggest that he might be a prehistoric fertility symbol (not surprising considering his disproportionately large phallus), a Romano-British depiction of Hercules or some other god of war, or even a huge 'cartoon' from the seventeenth century lampooning Oliver Cromwell. Access Assuming that you don't have the power of flight, the Giant is best viewed from the far side of the Cerne valley. He is clearly visible from the A352 road and there is a 'viewing area' with car parking spaces, picnic benches and interpretation board next to the turning to Cerne Abbas village. A waymarked "Giant Walk" takes the pedestrian visitor past his feet, but due to severe erosion of the turf the public is requested to remain outside the barbed-wire fence. Note: The Cerne Abbas Giant has grown his own Movember facial hair in support of Movember, which raises awareness of prostate and testicular cancer. You may be viewing yesterday's version of this page To see the most up to date information please register for a free account .

Cerne Abbas Giant submitted by TimPrevett First glimpse of the Cerne Abbas Giant while out on good 8 mile circuit of the Dorset countryside, 28/12/16. Cerne Abbas Giant submitted by Bladup Cerne Abbas Giant. Cerne Abbas Giant submitted by AngieLake Found this great vintage postcard just before Christmas, in Exeter. He doesn't seem to have changed much. Little dots around the figure might be people scouring the chalk, perhaps? Copyright of Aerofilms & Aero Pictorial Lts., Elstree Way, Boreham Wood, Herts. No stamp or message on rear to help trace date. Serial no. on front right = 4960A Cerne Abbas Giant submitted by croppy Cerne Abbas Giant Cerne Abbas Giant submitted by JimChampion View across the Giant towards Cerne Abbas village in the valley below. If you want to see him 'properly' then the Viewing Area alongside the main road on the other side of the valley is a good place. Cerne Abbas Giant submitted by JimChampion The Cerne Giant, looking a little faded even though he's illuminated by some (rare) sunshine on this rainy summer's day.

Off to the left the giant Homer Simpson is painted onto the hillside. I didn't get a photo of them together as the patchy sunlight didn't allow it (and the Homer was much whiter than the Giant). Cerne Abbas Giant Homer Simpson submitted by JimChampion 26 July 2007. A close-up of the giant Homer Simpson painted on Giant Hill (to the left of the Giant himself). Part of a stunt to publicise the cinema release of the Simpsons film. The figure was made using water-based paint - the idea being that it would gradually fade away. This was our second visit to the Giant viewing area on this afternoon - on the first it was pelting down with rain and ... Cerne Abbas Giant submitted by JimChampion Giant feet. The chalk hill figure is surrounded by a fence and "due to severe erosion of the turf the public is requested to remain outside the fence." Chalk figures need regular cleaning (scouring) if they are to remain vivid. This one is currently believed to have a relatively modern origin, possibly with the intent of mocking Oliver Cromwell. Cerne Abbas Giant submitted by JimChampion Giant Walk waymarker, with the obvious choice for the logo.

The walk takes you on a route up and around Giant Hill, although the best overall view (assuming you can't fly) is from the 'viewing area' alongside the main road. Cerne Abbas Giant submitted by JimChampion A slightly closer view of the Giant than usual, from the field below. The yellow grassy hexagon surrounding the Giant is an artefact from a now-removed fence (erected in 1887) that used to surround and protect the chalk figure. This coffin-shaped fence was removed in the late 1970s, replaced by a much larger rectangular enclosure which also includes "The Trendle" earthwork above the Giant's head. Cerne Abbas Giant submitted by Thorgrim Too good to be true! The Cerne Abbas Giant was long thought to be a prehistoric hill figure showing a powerful fertility god. Other theories favoured a Roman depiction of Hercules wielding his club. Recent dating of the disturbed soil indicates that it is much more recent. It is now thought to be a caricature of Oliver Cromwell and mocks his self agrandisement as the great all powerful leader. ...

Cerne Abbas Giant submitted by JimChampion August 2004, taken from the car park by the A352 road. The giant is illuminated by afternoon sunshine between the clouds. Very vivid colours on this occasion. Cerne Abbas Giant submitted by andyb456 Best viewed from the car park on the main road. Do not use the above information on other web sites or publications without permission of the contributor. The Cerne Abbas Giant (1640s) • 2014 The Cerne Abbas Giant The Cerne Abbas Giant is a chalk figure of an enormous naked man wielding a club carved into the side of a hill in Dorchester, England. The giant is one of a number of presumably ancient hill figures that dot the English countryside, such as the Long Man of Wilmington and the White Horse of Uffington. But the Cerne Abbas giant is uniquely distinctive because of the enormous erect phallus that he sports. The giant occupies a treasured place in British culture. He's widely believed to have been carved thousands of years ago. Folklore suggests he's an ancient fertility god, possessing the power to make childless women pregnant.

Postcards of him are the only images of a naked man accepted by the British post office. But in recent years historians have suggested that the Giant may date only to the seventeenth-century, since the first written reference to it only dates to 1694. Furthermore, its creation may have been a prank. The Giant on Trial On May 23rd, 1996, a mock trial was held in the town of Cerne Abbas to settle once and for all the question of the giant's age. A jury listened to different arguments before voting for one of them. The case for the giant's antiquity was presented first. Its proponents noted the antiquity of the hill-carving tradition and pointed out the pagan, pre-christian symbolism of the figure. This evidence, they argued, suggested the giant was many centuries old. Next, the historian Ronald Hutton spoke in favor of a modern giant. He presented expert witnesses who pointed out that the first written reference to the giant only occurred in 1694. This was not because early descriptions of the Cerne Abbas landscape were scarce. Quite the opposite. Many pre-seventeenth-century surveys of that region have survived, but none of them mention a giant.

By contrast, the presence of the Uffington Horse was noted as early as the eleventh century. Joseph Betty then presented an even more specific case for a modern giant. He argued that a local landowner called Denzil Holles created the giant in the seventeenth century during the English Civil War. Holles harbored a passionate hatred of the puritan commander Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell's followers often represented their leader as a modern-day, club-wielding Hercules. Therefore, what better way for Holles to satirize the commander, Betty suggested, than to plaster a 180-foot rude caricature of Hercules on a hilltop in the middle of England? This would make the giant analogous to the rude signs and symbols that sports fans in modern times often paint on hillsides to mock opposing teams. Betty noted that, given the dangerous political situation during the Civil War, Holles would have been careful not to make his authorship of the figure too obvious or too widely known. When the jury cast its votes, 50% of them stuck with the traditional ancient-origin theory, and 35% of them sided with Hutton and Betty. 15% felt that the giant's age was unimportant.

The trial has not ended the debate over the giant's age. Scholars continue to argue over whether the giant is prehistoric art or an enormous seventeenth-century hill hoax. Links and References Timothy Darvill, Katherine Barker, Barbara Bender, and Ronald Hutton. The Cerne Giant: An Antiquity on Trial. Oxbow Books. 1999. The British Shore in Weymouth | Travel + Leisure The British Shore in Weymouth The British Shore in Weymouth By Rebecca Mead Weymouth, Dorset's seaside resort, has abundant charm and a history that encompasses D-day and the Spanish Armada. They even say the black death came from Weymouth. Rebecca Mead returns home to this quintessentially British shoreline There are, in the world, far more impressive beaches than the one at Weymouth, a seaside town in the county of Dorset in the south of England—beaches with whiter sand, clearer, warmer water, and much more reliably blue skies.

The sand at Weymouth is a dunnish yellow; the water, even on the warmest of days, can be charitably described as bracing; and the skies above the rolling hills and white chalk cliffs that embrace the curve of Weymouth Bay are so changeable as to suggest that watercolor painting itself was invented to capture their unpredictability. With regard to the weather, taking a vacation in Weymouth is a bit like playing the slot machines that can be found in the amusement arcades that line the seafront: you understand that the machines are rigged to ensure the arcade owner's ultimate profit, but you still hope you might strike it lucky along the way. I grew up in Weymouth and know all too well the limitations of the English seaside within the marketplace of contemporary vacation spots: in addition to the inclemency of the weather there is the unsuitability of narrow, 17th-century streets for modern vehicular traffic, and the very English absence, on the menu of a restaurant called the Lobster Pot, not only of lobsters but of almost anything that ever actually lived in the sea.

But although the town may not compare, as a beach destination, with one of those Caribbean resorts where workers rise at dawn each morning to rake the sand clear of seaweed before the guests emerge to enjoy the flawless, paradisiacal environs for which they have contracted, Weymouth nonetheless has its own charms—particularly for those who prefer finding traces of history written upon the place they are visiting, rather than expecting its complete erasure. Weymouth has candy-striped beachside huts selling buckets and spades and fish-and-chips, and retirees sitting in deck chairs on the promenade with blankets over their knees while younger, bolder visitors walk by shirtless and sunburned; but it also has an uninterrupted sweep of white-painted Georgian town houses along the seafront, with bowed windows optimistically facing the shimmering sea exactly as so many did more than 200 years ago. The town is part New Jersey shore, part Masterpiece Theatre. I've come to think of my childhood home as the Forrest Gump of towns: it's occasionally found itself at the center of historical events without ever having had any ambition to be there.

One early instance of Weymouth's accidental notoriety is that in 1348 it served as the point of entry in Britain for the black death, the plague that killed a third of Europe's population. "The black death started at the Black Dog," I was told by the man behind the counter at the town's car-rental shop when I visited not long ago; he was referring to the Black Dog public house, reputed to be Weymouth's oldest tavern. Persuasive alliteration aside, there's no evidence that the black death did begin at the Black Dog; the fact that the building dates only to the 16th century argues against it. But a visit to the bar, with its low-beamed ceiling and its pervasive scent of beer, is enough to conjure images of sailors and serving wenches merrily exchanging lesser infections throughout the centuries. In a more recent instance of Weymouth stumbling into the history books, its port served as the launching spot for more than 500,000 troops and nearly 150,000 vehicles during the D-day landings of 1944, and a few by now very elderly veterans still show up each year for the anniversary.

Weymouth's role in D-day, along with the part the town played in defending against the Spanish Armada and the Napoleonic fleets, is showcased at Nothe Fort, a harbor defense that was built between 1860 and 1872 and is now a naval museum with an enticing collection of old-fashioned military dioramas, cannons, and anti-aircraft weaponry from World War II. The volunteer staff at the Nothe Fort is so eager for their exhibits to be viewed with the proper attention that, when I arrived only 45 minutes before the museum's closing time, the gatekeepers were reluctant to let me in. "There are seventy-two rooms here," they informed me reprovingly. It reminded me of the time a shopkeeper in Weymouth told me that she'd stopped stocking a certain item because it kept selling out too quickly. Weymouth's proudest Forrest Gump moment, however, came in 1789, when it received the first of several visits from King George III.

The king was recovering from the initial episode of what would turn out to be a sporadic but debilitating madness, now thought to have been caused by Variegate Porphyria, a rare genetic disease that affects the skin and central nervous system. His doctors advised him that the seaside might be health-promoting. The town, by all accounts, went nuts over the royal arrival. The novelist Fanny Burney, who was a member of the royal household at the time, wrote a letter to her father from Weymouth in which she noted, "The loyalty of all this place is excessive; they have dressed out every street with labels of 'God save the King': all the shops have it over the doors; all the children wear it in their caps, all the labourers in their hats, and all the sailors in their voices, for they never approach the house without shouting it aloud, nor see the King, or his shadow, without beginning to huzza, and going on to three cheers." The main purpose of the king's visit was to engage in the newly fashionable health treatment of sea bathing, or dipping, as it was known.

Bathers were rolled into the sea in wheeled bathing machines that looked like a cross between an enclosed sedan chair and a small caravan, from which they would descend a flight of wooden steps into the cold water, where a phalanx of helpers called dippers would give hands-on assistance for a full immersion. The king's bathing machine was an octagonal hut with a peaked roof built atop a four-wheeled cart and decorated with the royal crest. The monarch's specially appointed dippers wore GOD SAVE THE KING on sashes swathed around their waists, and on the occasion of the king's first immersion, a band concealed in another bathing machine piped up with a stirring rendition of the national anthem at the moment of his head's submerging. When I was a child, the king's bathing machine was the prize exhibit at the Weymouth Museum; these days, museum and machine can be found at a place called Brewers Quay, an old brewery that, in my youth, perfumed the air over the harbor with beery yeast but has since been repurposed into an unpleasantly commercial shopping arcade with the pandering interactive Timewalk through Weymouth's history, a tour conducted by a cartoon character of a brewery cat.

Dipping didn't relieve the king of his madness, though it must have delivered a considerable shock to the royal system. The king made his visits to Weymouth in September, by which time the local climate is decidedly autumnal. To the modern-day visitor accustomed to the concept that the beach is somewhere you go to laze and tan, Weymouth beach, even at the height of summer, presents a perplexing comedy in which the 18th-century notion that the seaside is healthful but not necessarily comfortable apparently persists. Experienced beachgoers come equipped with windbreaks (waist-high canvas walls on wooden stakes that are nailed into the ground, behind which people sit, shielded from the winds), while some even pitch small tents on the sand for complete, zip-up shelter. Children frolic for hours at the water's edge, certainly; but many of them these days wear black wet suits that cover them from elbow to knee, and little rubber shoes, which can be bought on the seafront at gift stores, alongside the saucy postcards and souvenir candy. Although Weymouth couldn't cure the king, the king certainly transformed Weymouth.

Until the middle of the 18th century, there hadn't really been a beach at Weymouth—in those days, the strand of sand that is now the pride of the resort served as a garbage dump for the older town that is still huddled around the harbor. By the late 18th century, the sand had been cleared and bathing machines installed, and the king's brother, the Duke of Gloucester, had built himself a mansion on what was then the outskirts of the town. Gloucester Lodge, which in later years became a hotel and is now an apartment building with a bar and restaurant in its basement, signaled an epistemological shift in Weymouth: it was the first house to turn a welcoming face toward the curve of the bay, rather than turning its shoulder to the dangerous water, as the town's older buildings had done for centuries. (One Tudor building near the harbor displays scars of violence from the seas: in 1645, during the civil war, it suffered an assault from a ship's cannon, and a cannonball is still embedded in its gable.

That building, originally a merchant's house, has served for decades now as a very useful public toilet.) The king made Gloucester Lodge his Weymouth residence, where he would receive updates on affairs of state and goings-on across the channel, into which he was diligently being dipped. (It was presumably from Gloucester Lodge that King George wrote to Lord Grenville, his foreign secretary, in September 1792, about the latest news from France: "The idea of trying the Queen and adding her death to their many other crimes is most shocking, and must alienate the minds of all who have the least sentiments of humanity.") The citizens of Weymouth, rather than beheading their monarch, were finding out just how lucrative a monarch could be with his head still on: the king himself visited Weymouth for only 16 years, but his royal endorsement resulted in a boom that lasted a half-century or more. In 1800, the Esplanade was built, the stately seafront terrace whose architectural consistency is interrupted only by the gaudy Victorian addition of the Royal Hotel, completed in 1897.

Although Weymouth was always less raffish than Brighton, the resort favored by the prince regent, George III's son, it became an elegant resort for the rich, and the likes of Frank Churchill, the rapscallion charmer in Jane Austen's novel Emma, thought it fashionable enough to patronize. In 1810, the 50th anniversary of the king's coronation, the burghers of Weymouth erected a now gaudily painted statue of the king gazing out to sea, wearing an ermine cloak and flanked by a lion and a unicorn. He's still there, less a historical figure to locals than a signpost—the town bus stops at "the statue," which is never confused with another statue, the one of Queen Victoria at the Esplanade's other end—even though the horn on the unicorn was snapped off long ago. Weymouth's 18th-century grandeur has dwindled significantly, and these days the houses along the Esplanade are mostly moderately priced guesthouses, many of them lavishly decked with red, white, and blue flags, as if King George might show up at any moment, and decorated with elaborate floral displays.

Their interiors tend to show a disregard for authenticity consistent with Weymouth's current incarnation as a decidedly downmarket family destination. The breakfast room of the Brunswick Guest House, where I stayed and where the guests debate, each morning, the chance of sun or showers over fried eggs and sausages, is filled not with period antiques but with the owner's prized collection of framed posters of Hollywood movies and, over the mantelpiece, a selection of plates adorned with the image of Marilyn Monroe. Weymouth is a bit like that—the tacky and the elegant thrown haphazardly together by the accidents of history, the former showing no reverence for the latter. Weymouth's kitsch is not contrived: there's nothing knowingly ironic about its trampolines and helter-skelter slide and Punch and Judy stand, or about the sculptures of Neptune and galloping white-foam sea horses that a self-taught artist named Fred Darrington started modeling out of sand in a cordoned-off area of the beach in the 1920's, and are these days created by Darrington's grandson Mark Anderson.

There's no pretentious gentrification, which means that although there are now restaurants that aspire to decent cuisine, and even reach it (Perry's, a seafood restaurant on the harborside, actually sells seafood), the best meal I had on my most recent trip back to Weymouth was at a place on Market Street called Fish 'n' Fritz. It offers a choice of cod, haddock, plaice, or rock (huss) and is, in traditional Weymouth style, adorned with signed publicity photographs of washed-up celebrities from the sixties, seventies, and eighties, like the Mamas and the Papas, Rose Royce, and—a band whose success the United States was spared—the Nolans. When I was growing up in Weymouth, back when those celebrities were in their prime and I would have been thrilled to get their autographs, I had no idea that my town represented the lower-class end of Dorset, while all those inland miles of green hills and quaint villages were the county's high-class end.

In fact, I didn't realize it until years later, when I was living in New York and, at a cocktail party, met a man who'd grown up 30 miles from Weymouth, and who responded to my enthusiastic claim that we were from the "same place" by coolly pointing out that I was from Seaside Dorset, while he was from Country Dorset. He had a point: the two are quite different, even for those visitors not attuned to the complex hierarchies of the English class system. Country Dorset, with its picturesque villages of thatched stone cottages, set amid patchwork fields where cows or sheep graze by wooded ponds, tends in many places to look like a set for a commercial advertising something timeless and wholesome. The villages frequently have been used as sets for commercials advertising things timeless and wholesome, though not necessarily of Dorsetshire provenance: Gold Hill, a staggeringly pretty cobbled rise of cottages in the village of Shaftesbury, is well known to British television viewers of a certain age from commercials for Hovis, a bread company based two counties over, in Berkshire.

But an air of timelessness—there are no major highways in the county, and many villages are linked by single-lane roads—is hardly the most interesting thing about Country Dorset: it has its fair share of intriguing if somewhat accidental history, too. One of my favorite spots is Cerne Abbas, a village more or less preserved in amber in the 1840's, when it was bypassed by the Dorset railway system that brought advanced civilization to places like Weymouth. There are atmospheric, ivy-covered ruins of a 15th-century abbey, from which the town derives its name (legend has it that the first abbey on the site was built near a spring that spurted to life when a visiting Saint Augustine struck the ground with his staff), and a row of circa-1500 wood-framed, tile-roofed houses, whose gnarled struts and carved doorways were already almost a century old at the time of Shakespeare.

But the village's most spectacular asset is the Cerne Abbas Giant—a 180-foot-high figure of a naked man cut into a steep chalk hillside just outside the town, holding an enormous club in one hand and brandishing from his groin an equally oversize erection. No one knows much about the Giant's origins: he could be a 1,500-year-old legacy from the Roman occupation of Britain, representing Hercules, but there is, mysteriously enough, no mention of him in any historical documents until 1694, which has led to more recent speculation by historians that he is a caricature of Oliver Cromwell, surreptitiously carved into the hillside by sniggering royalists. The civil war is also obliquely memorialized in the towering aspect of Corfe Castle, a hilltop ruin in the southeastern corner of Dorset. The castle has an ancient foundation: it was originally built in 1087 by William the Conqueror, who sought to secure his claim upon England with a series of castles strategically placed along the southern coastline.

Over the years, Corfe Castle was augmented by succeeding monarchs, and in the 13th century King John maintained a royal house there as a base for hunting parties. In 1572 it became a private residence, and in 1635 it was sold to Sir John Bankes, whose loyalty to the king's side during the civil war was such that his family withstood two sieges by parliamentary forces and were only defeated by treachery from within their own garrison. The castle was reduced to ruins not by a pitched battle but by the government's decision, in the tumultuous year of 1646, that the structure should be brought down so as to prevent its becoming a royalist holdout once again. The political crisis permitted about as much concern for historic preservation as that displayed by the Marilyn-loving proprietor of the Brunswick Guest House: the castle was blasted with what must have been prodigious quantities of gunpowder, so that its turrets now appear to be sliding haphazardly down the hillside; its half-demolished inner bailey has been reduced to a jagged tower.

Locals made the best of the situation by carting off the blasted stone walls and building much of the lovely village that sits at the castle's ruined foot; and the Bankes family didn't do so badly, either. Between 1663 and 1665, they built Kingston Lacy, a house near the inland Dorset town of Wimborne Minster. The keys to Corfe Castle are preserved in the library, having been graciously bestowed upon Lady Bankes, with a very English propriety, by the parliamentary forces as they prepared to blow up her house. Much of Kingston Lacy's interior reflects the taste of a 19th-century Bankes descendant, a friend of Lord Byron who lived on the Continent to avoid prosecution for homosexuality and had all kinds of treasures shipped back to Dorset, including a gilded ceiling from a Venetian palazzo. The art collection is one of Dorset's surprises, and includes portraits by Titian, van Dyck, Velázquez, and Rubens, the last an uncanny rendering of the beautiful marchesa Maria Grimaldi accompanied by a glowering dwarf who pulls a curtain back to reveal the scene.

The odd old master aside, Dorset's greatest visual glory is its coastal path—part of a 630-mile-long trail that stretches from Minehead, in Somerset, almost to Poole, in Dorset. (In 2001, the place was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site; it's known as the Jurassic Coast.) The South West Coast Path is as impressive, in its way, as Route 1 in California, with the added attraction of its natural beauty not being marred by any actual highway. Backpackers in serious boots tramp alongside sprightly elderly locals with faces as craggy and weathered as the rocks around them: past Durdle Door, a spectacular natural archway carved into the limestone by the eroding waves; down to the neighboring Man-of-War Cove, a locale straight from the pages of a children's adventure book, cliff-edged and hemmed in by jagged outcrops of rock jutting from the water; and around the Isle of Portland, a craggy peninsula barely attached to the coastline by a high strand of stony beach.

You might think that here, in raw nature, there would be no traces of the comings and goings of British kings, or British conflicts, but that, of course, would be an error. The coastline around Durdle Door remains attractively undeveloped in part not because of its beauty but because it has been used for decades as an army firing range. (Dangerous parts are roped off.) Portland, reminiscent of Maine in its wild rockiness, is famous for its quarries, from which was cut the limestone that served to rebuild many of London's finest churches, including St. Paul's Cathedral, after the Great Fire of 1666. King George III makes an appearance on the coastal path, too. In 1808, an image of the king on horseback, measuring 280 feet by 323 feet, was carved into a chalk hillside in Osmington, just outside Weymouth. When I was growing up, I was told that the mad king, rather than being delighted at the tribute, was so offended that he'd been depicted riding out of town, rather than into it, that he never returned to Weymouth.

On my last trip home, I discovered that the hard fact that he had, in any case, stopped visiting the town after 1805 perhaps puts this historical datum into the "black death started at the Black Dog" category. But that's the thing about accidental history—the ring of truth has a pleasing enough sound to be going on with. WEYMOUTH AND DORSET WHEN TO GO June and July are usually quiet (English schools don't get out until mid-July), which makes August the month when holidaymakers descend. Don't miss the mid-August carnival, complete with a parade and rides set up on the Esplanade along the beach—it's madly crowded but wildly amusing. Another good time to visit is during a warm weekend in May, but this can be hard to arrange as the weather is so unreliable. The warmest summer temperatures hit a high of only about 68 degrees— jackets and Windbreakers are recommended. GETTING THERE It is possible to drive to Weymouth from Heathrow (121 miles) or Gatwick (145 miles), but this is not advisable in the summer months, when traffic can be heavy.

There are also numerous flights from Europe into Bournemouth and Southampton airports, and easy links from France and Belgium into Poole and Weymouth. Trains that stop at the coastal towns leave hourly from London via Dorchester South and from Bath. Trains between Weymouth and Dorchester depart every half-hour and those between Weymouth and Bristol leave every two hours. Buses are another viable option: one four-hour National Express bus arrives daily from London, and many more come from Bristol, Southampton, and Bournemouth. For further information, contact Traveline (44-870/608-2608; ). WHERE TO STAY Brunswick Guest House Brunswick offers local color inside (a British clientele and homey comfort) and out (it faces directly onto the beach—and its uproarious weekend scene). 9 Brunswick Terrace; 44-1305/785-408; ; doubles from $55, including breakfast. Hotel Rembrandt This hotel is definitely the fanciest place in town. 1218 Dorchester Rd.; 44-1305/764-000; ; doubles from $185, including breakfast.

Royal Hotel Visitors must book at this Victorian property for a minimum of three nights. The rooms with unobstructed views of the Esplanade are a hot commodity (and cost extra). 9091 Esplanade; 44-1305/782-777; ; three-night package from $240 per person. WHERE TO EAT

Question: What is the name of the prehistoric figure, of a man holding a club, that is carved into the chalk near Dorchester, England?
Answer: Cerne Giant