©Bryan Phillips Oct 2024

We were at the recent conference ‘Cerne Giant and other Wessex Hill Figures’ at the Dorset Museum which discussed the dating of the phallic giant.

There were some interesting talks: one by Barbara Yorke, University of Winchester, showed the real difficulty of establishing the foundation date of Cerne Abbey. No foundation charter exits, only a document by Aethelmaer around 987 which refers to the abbey. At least we know the date of the foundation of Milton Abbey as there was a foundation charter of Easter 934 by King Athelstan, although the original is now lost, it was copied into both Latin and Old English. The medieval records of Cerne Abbey manor are very patchy and the earliest appears to be 1343 so its history is not as well known as Milton Abbey’s. See Peter Traskey’s superb book ‘Milton Abbey: A Dorset Monastery in the Middle Ages’ Compton 1978.

Although the recent dating of the Cerne Giant hill figure by optical stimulated luminescence is reported by archaeologists as secure, Ronald Hutton showed that the new date raises even more questions than the previously believed dates. Also the word element ‘giant’ or the Old English ‘ent’ does not occur in any Dorset place name, although there are a couple of ‘Grim’ and many ‘burg’ for barrow. This is despite the fact that many place names are indicative of local landmarks. Perhaps the Cerne Giant was not visible for very long after it was made? Chalk hill figures require scouring and re-chalking every ten years or so, otherwise they become overgrown and invisible. The grass steps at Milton Abbas have similarly suffered in recent decades.

It is noted that the the giant on the hillside was used and thought of as a fertility symbol in local folklore. Interestingly its location in the landscape being on a scarp slope nearby and facing Cerne Abbey has many similarities to that of St Catherine’s Chapel at Milton Abbey which also gave rise to a  fertility cult in folklore. See our webpage.One of our members has examined the LiDAR images but no hint of a ‘hill figure’ can be seen in Milton Abbas.

Note that in the Exon Domesday Book the land holdings at Cerne and Milton at around 120 hides were very similar in total and at the home abbey.