The Rituals at the Long Man
The Long Man of Wilmington is a 72 m chalk hill figure first drawn in 1710 and dated to the 1500s or 1600s. Morris dancers and pagans still gather there.
The Long Man of Wilmington is a giant outline of a man holding two staves, cut into the north face of Windover Hill above Wilmington in East Sussex. He is about 72 metres (235 feet) tall. The earliest firm record of him is a drawing made in 1710, and a 2003 study dated the figure to the 16th or 17th century, not to prehistory. Today he is a gathering place. The Long Man Morris Men dance at his feet at dawn every May Day, and pagan and Druid groups hold seasonal ceremonies on the hill.
The figure
The Long Man is a plain outline with no face or features. He holds a staff upright in each hand. Some see spears, some pilgrim staves, some the posts of a doorway. The shape you see today is not quite the original. In 1873 and 1874 the Reverend William de St Croix, vicar of Glynde, marked the outline with yellow bricks. That work may have changed the shape of the feet. In 1969 the bricks were replaced with pre-cast blocks, which are painted white. During the Second World War the figure was painted green, so that German aircrews could not use it as a landmark.
How old is he?
For a long time people argued that the Long Man was Neolithic, Bronze Age or Roman. The written record does not support that. The first definite date is a drawing by the surveyor John Rowley made in 1710 and found in 1993 among the Devonshire Collections at Chatsworth House. In 2003 the archaeologist Martin Bell of the University of Reading studied the soils on the slope for the Open University’s Landscape Mysteries series. His team concluded that the figure was most likely cut in the 16th or 17th century. That does not explain who made him or why. It does rule out the idea of an unbroken prehistoric cult at the site.
The modern rituals
Most of what happens at the Long Man now is recent. The Long Man Morris Men were founded in 1978. Every May Day they dance at the foot of the figure as the sun comes up, starting around 5.30 a.m. A 2008 report marked their 30th May Day performance there.
Pagan use of the hill has grown since the late 20th century. Wikipedia notes that rituals are held on the Sundays nearest each of the eight festivals of the pagan Wheel of the Year. The Council of British Druid Orders regards the site as sacred. The Druid writer Philip Carr-Gomm drew attention to it in his 1993 book The Druid Way. People who take part describe a sense of presence, a feeling of energy, or the idea that the two staves frame a doorway into another world. These are personal accounts. No one has recorded or measured anything unusual there.
The hill also attracts pranks. On the night of 17 to 18 June 2010 someone painted a large phallus on the figure, in imitation of the Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorset.
Why the experiences happen
Earlier versions of this page quoted named pagans and a University of Sussex psychologist. We could not trace any of those people or quotes, and we have removed them. The likely explanations are ordinary ones. People come to the hill expecting something. They gather in groups at dawn or dusk, in wind and failing light, often after a steep climb. Chanting can bring on light-headedness. Groups share and shape each other’s impressions. None of this makes the experiences less real to the people who have them. It just means the hill does not need to be magic for them to happen.
Legacy
The Long Man has gone from a figure of unknown age to one with a fairly clear early modern date. His meaning is still open. That openness is what draws dancers, pagans and walkers to Windover Hill, and it is why each new generation reads him in its own way.