I stride across the field, under a sky scudding with plump clouds. I should see it soon, I think. The hill rises to my right, its rich green shouldering up. The occasional butterfly dances out of my way. Collared doves call. Though the day is just-right, partly sunny and just-warm and perfect, a tang of autumn slips through the air.
Another minute up the gradual incline, and I see it, tucked in the folds of the hill. The Long Man of Wilmington.
It’s an interesting choice, I think as I stop to take a picture, calling this figure the Long Man. Appropriately enough, the chalk person is long, indeed elongated, with muscled legs and slightly plump arms. But there is nothing about it to suggest it’s either male or female—its shape is entirely neutral.
The Long…Person dates back to at least the 1700s, when the first drawing was made of it, and perhaps that is as far as it goes. Of course, some think perhaps this figure in the East Sussex hills was first created in the Iron Age, or even in the Neolithic period. It’s a mystery.
The figure lies on the slightly concave slope of the hill, arms outstretched with two long lines on either side. A lot of assumptions come into play about these lines, which perhaps say more about us than about the Long Man. It is typically assumed to be an ancient warrior—those must be spears, right?—or maybe they are sheaves of wheat and it’s a fertility symbol.
I don’t know what the lines represented to their original makers. But as I make my way up the field, pausing every now and then to look again, I think maybe the figure isn’t holding two objects at all. Perhaps they are standing in a doorway. On a threshold. A liminal space.
The Church of St. Mary and St. Peter lies on this side of Windover Hill, where the Long Man resides. The whole day seems to grow darker as I pass through the iron gate. Yew trees crowd the churchyard. Younger yews that appear to have been cut back. What one might call middle-aged yews, with a brightness to their greenery.
And closest to the church, its heavy limbs propped up by poles and suspended with chains, one of the oldest trees in England. An ancient yew, estimated to be 1600 years old. Older than the church, certainly. Perhaps even older than the influence of Christianity in this part of England.
Its leaves are a dusty green. Its bark worn smooth, buckling up into wrinkles like elephant skin.
The yew is a liminal tree in the Celtic tradition—it symbolizes the transition between this life and what comes next. Fittingly, they can often be found in churchyards where people are buried. The yew itself is, in that sense, a kind of doorway.
As I walk up toward the Long Man itself (after having a good pub lunch, of course!), I can’t shake the feeling that the symbology of the yews, so close and so ancient, must have some connection to the symbology of the Long Man. I draw closer up the steep hill, passing red-berried hawthorn trees, which are associated with faeries. Of course, I’m in England, not Ireland or Scotland with their stronger (or at least clearer) traditions of faerie faith, but still, these trees seem like appropriate guardians of the site.
And perhaps the Long Man isn’t simply standing in a doorway. Perhaps this is a doorway into the earth, like the entrances to the faerie realms in Celtic stories. Or perhaps the earth is a doorway. Perhaps the great hill itself is a threshold.
Maybe the Long Man is all of these things—an androgynous figure on a threshold, a warrior, a fertility symbol. Perhaps it is none of them. We’ll never know what the original creator intended—we don’t even know when the lines were first worn into the grass!
All we can do in places like this is let them speak to us. We can wonder. We can imagine. We can ask questions. I doubt there will ever be a definitive answer to the mystery of the Long Man—and that gives us space to dream.
I leave the Long Man, climbing the chalk trail high up onto the shoulder of Windover Hill. More hills tumble in the distance, the clouds creating blue shadows in the green fields. To the south the sea glitters, an offshore wind farm whirring.
The landscape itself is a threshold: an invitation to drink the verdant late-summer sweetness of life.
Ahh, so well written! Those liminal spaces are so enchanting. I like your thoughts of the figure standing in a doorway, a threshold. Very well done!