Aerial Investigation and Mapping Report - English Heritage

Seeing the Long ManThere has been debate and disagreement over the restored outline of the figure since1874, while questions have also been raised over the 1969 repair (Rodney Castleden isthe most persistent critic: see, for example, Castleden 1983, 2002, 2003). The mainconcerns post-1874 have focused on the positioning of the legs and, particularly, the feet.More recently, some have argued that there are some discrepancies between the currentconcrete outline and the brick one that it replaced. In addition, there has also beendiscussion about additional details – including facial features – that some claim to haveseen, or which were featured in pre-1874 sketches and written accounts. Those pre-1874sources are limited in both quantity and quality but a particular problem concerns exactlywhat people were seeing before that first restoration – before the bricks were laid out,what was visible?Although the Long Man is familiar today as a solid white outline on an otherwise greenhillside, he did not become so until the whitewashing of the yellow bricks laid out in 1874.Prior to that 1874 restoration, the presence of the Long Man was indicated by differentialgrass growth. Consequently he was difficult, if not impossible, to see at certain times ofyear, or from particular viewpoints. The earliest known written description, dating from c1780, although referring to him as ‘a rude figure cut out in the Chalk’, added that ‘theSpot being covered with grass may be plainly discovered in Summer by the colour of theGrass’ (Farrant 1993, 129) A guidebook published a few years later, in c 1790, informedprospective tourists that ‘On the side of the hill is the figure of a man in the differenttincture of the grass… It is formed by a pavement of bricks underneath the turf, whichgives it this difference of colour. In time of snow it is more visible’ (ibid., 130).The idea of a pavement of bricks beneath the turf received short shrift from others. TheRev DT Powell, probably writing in 1831, commented that ‘Though we frequently madeobservation on this extraordinary monument I have never heard an item about this brickpavement. I fancy it is [an] utterly fanciful account’ (Farrant 1995, 284). In 1835,meanwhile, Horsfield observed that ‘the figure of a man 240 feet in height mayoccasionally be seen by a remarkable difference in the verdure… Various are the opinionsrespecting the origin of this figure; some have asserted that it was paved, but the mostprobable conjecture is that it was merely shaped in the turf so as to let the chalk appearthrough. It is only seen under peculiar circumstances and to the best advantage whenthere is a small quantity of snow on the ground. The indentation is so very slight as not tobe visible on the spot, although it may occasionally be seen at a considerable distance ofseveral miles’ (cited in St Croix 1881, 107-8). Finally, in 1874, John Phené, whose researchand speculations over his origins brought the Long Man to antiquarian and archaeologicalattention, and essentially led to the idea of restoration, referred to ‘slight but beautifulintaglio and cameo effects’ (ibid., 101).Consequently there are two not necessarily mutually exclusive explanations for the pre-1874 outline – an ‘indentation’ in the turf, i.e. an outline formed by a shallow depression,© ENGLISH HERITAGE 67 22 - 2013