Across the rolling downs of southern England, a shining, white giant strides over the Dorset hills. The Cerne Abbas Giant is a memorable figure whose fame hides his mysterious origins. Cut into the chalk and measuring 55 metres high, he is best known for his proud and upstanding nature. Couples looking for a fertility boost have been known to climb the hill to have a chat with the giant (and perhaps there is indeed something in the water: back in 2010 the Office for National Statistics reported that local women had the highest birth rates in the country). His image has also inspired artists over the decades, appearing in everything from Eric Ravilious’s watercolours to Grayson Perry’s motorbike leathers.
For a giant who famously bears all, he has kept many secrets, not least his age. Back in the 18th century, antiquarians considered him to be of a similar vintage to the 3000-year-old Uffington White Horse in Oxfordshire, perhaps a prehistoric deity or a Romano-British god. Later, when historians realised that there was no written reference to him prior to 1694, they suggested that he had been cut during the Civil War as an insult to Oliver Cromwell.
Now, the fragments of quartz and tiny snail shells that make up his white body are helping to tell another, even more intriguing story. By looking at the last time that sunlight shone on the quartz directly below the chalk figure, researchers have worked out that it may have been cut between AD 700 and 1100, which would make it the only known Anglo-Saxon creation of its kind. And by establishing the age of tiny shells belonging to snails that only arrived in England in the later Middle Ages, researchers believe that the Cerne Abbas Giant was left to grass over for a time, before being uncovered and cleaned up again.