Wilmington

The Giant Above the Street

Cut into the chalk of Windover Hill, a figure about seventy metres tall — some 230 feet — stands with a staff held out in each hand, looking down on Wilmington's single street. The Long Man has been drawn since at least 1710, when a surveyor called John Rowley recorded him, and William Burrell drew him again in 1766. What began as a shape you could only catch in certain light was later marked in yellow brick, then concrete blocks; during the Second World War the whole outline was painted green so enemy aircraft could not use it as a landmark.

The street below runs on a gentle slope, and the Long Man Inn sits along it. The building went up in 1908 as the Black Horse Hotel, became the Giant's Rest in 2000, closed after the pandemic, and reopened under its present name in May 2023. Inside there is a Locals' Snug; outside there is a garden and a sunny front terrace. The chef, Mathew Comben, cooks with local ingredients where he can, and the kitchen covers vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free eaters. Dogs are welcome, and four of the rooms are dog-friendly, which matters in a place where most people arrive with muddy boots and a lead.

Ale and Open Downs

The cask beer is Long Man Best Bitter, usually alongside another Long Man ale or the Long Blonde, and it is gravity-dispensed. The brewery is a short way off at Church Farm near Litlington, where brewing on the site is traceable to 1538, though it is not open to visitors. Litlington also has one of the oldest tea rooms in Sussex, its tea gardens laid out about a century and a half ago.

A stay here is arranged around walking. Footpaths climb from the car park to both the foot and the top of the figure; the lower path is manageable on foot but probably not for wheelchairs. Overhead runs the South Downs Way, giving a high route west to Alfriston or east towards Jevington and Eastbourne, and the Wealdway passes the Long Man on its way from Gravesend to the coast. For a full day, the Alfriston and Cuckmere circular takes in Friston Forest, the riverbank and the Litlington White Horse, with a short spur out to the tiny church at Lullington.

Stones, Yew and Phoenix

The parish church of St Mary and St Peter began around 1200 as a chapel beside the priory, and its chancel is still twelfth-century work in flint and imported Caen stone. There is a fourteenth-century font and a Jacobean pulpit with its sounding board. In the churchyard stands a yew reckoned at about 1,600 years old and twenty-three feet around near the base; a stone said to be Roman, dug from the vicarage well by the man who dug the well, now lies over his own grave. A fire in 2002 took the north transept, the organ and a window; the replacement glass by Paul San Casciani sets a phoenix in the new work and turns that ancient yew into a Tree of Life.

Priory, Pound and Domesday

The priory that the church grew beside started as a cell of Grestain Abbey in Normandy before 1086 and was closed in 1415. Beside it the village pound survives as a flint-walled enclosure, where the Pindar once held stray pigs, sheep and horses until their owners came with a fine. The Domesday surveyors counted thirty-five households here and valued the place at thirteen pounds and fifteen shillings.

The Road In, the Giant Above

Trains stop at Polegate, about two and a half miles off, and Berwick a little further; the A27 runs past the end of the lane, and Cuckmere Buses call on a handful of days each week, so it is worth checking the timetable before relying on one. Behind the village hall there is a garden with benches and a boules piste, and above it the Long Man keeps his own counsel. "The Giant keeps his secret," wrote the Rev. A. A. Evans, "and from his hillside flings out a perpetual challenge."