History in the making - 2007
Does anyone remember Trinny and Susannah - Women Undress. An ITV show which featured these two fashion women dressing poor females who thought themselves as dumpy or ill wardrobed. That maybe cruel but then light hearted entertainment is all about that sort of thing.
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| Wilmington Long Man. Taken from Wiki - Cupcake kid |
Well the two women committed a crime against one of the precious monuments of England - The Wilmington Long Man. For historic evidence go to the Wiki here, but it was a medieval figure marked out by chalk. The idea was to turn the 'man' into a 'woman'. Good thing they did not try it on The Cerne Giant, getting rid of his penis might have been a problem!
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| Cerne Giant taken from Wiki - Peter Harlow |
But they came up against the Druids who were angry at this desecration of the monument and who protested at the site. You can see the disagreement in the video below. The video by the way is old and a bit of jumping around is probably needed, it is 9 minutes long. We must have covered it on Heritage Action and I wrote about it here.
It is the sheer silliness of it all that still makes me giggle, what were those hundred women, dressed in their white suites, thinking about. Was this women's liberation gone batty, or was it the fault of a producer that had hardly left London to think up this silly prank. The dignified Druids turned their backs on the women as they came down the side of the hill away from the monument.
All this came back this morning when I was thinking about the chalk giant in John Hooker's poem. At least it has stopped raining now. It was a gentle sound though noisier on the Velux windows in the attic.
Well I don't quite understand what was going on in that video so my Saturday has begun on a confusing note. Why couldn't they leave The Wilmington Long Man alone in peace to look out upon the landscape of his ancestors?
ReplyDeleteIt was a publicity stunt. The point being to change the Long Man into a woman, with breasts, pigtail, etc. The Druids were furious, denigrating the monument. Druids protect the prehistoric stones, and other historic points in the landscape, it is part of their belief system.
ReplyDeleteThis is the first I've heard of this. What a preposterous notion and how disrespectful.
ReplyDeleteYes it was a bad stunt and a stupid notion as well Janice.
DeleteI've never heard of these monuments before. Are they actually carved in chalk that is in the hillside or are they now just painted on blocks? I was confused by the Wikipedia account. They have to be touched up every now and then?
ReplyDeleteIt is the underlying chalk that is carved into the hillside Ellen, but then the grass and dirt cover the whiteness of the chalk and it has to be cleaned. Mostly it is white horses carved into the chalk hills, but also these two giants and also military badges of the divisions within the army.
ReplyDeleteWell, its a perfect example of how entertainment can sometimes clash hilariously with history and heritage.
ReplyDeleteSlava Ukraine
You sent me down a rabbit hole of reading about the Long Man and several incidents of vandalism over the years!
ReplyDelete