Cerne Abbas Giant - Pagan Fertility Symbol or England's Sexiest Monument ?

The best way to describe the sexiest of English national monuments, the Cerne Abbas Giant, is to let the National Trust do it. Here is how one of Britain's most respectable institutions, and the organisation that maintains the giant, describes him on its website: "A huge outline sculpted into the chalk hillside above the village of Cerne Abbas representing a naked, sexually aroused, club-wielding giant."

Yes indeed. The village of Cerne Abbas is in Dorset, in England's West Country. It's eight miles north of Dorchester on the A352. Direct access to the sexy monument is discouraged by the National Trust because of erosion but, in any event, the giant can only be fully seen from a distant viewpoint. See him from from a lay-by (British for a pull-over area beside a road) on the A352 north of the village.

No one is really sure because the Cerne Abbas Giant has never been accurately dated. One tradition says that he is an ancient pagan fertility symbol. This theory has its fans and, for years, childless couples have been drawn to amorous encounters near the giant's most upstanding feature.

But there is another, more mundane theory, that he was carved by a 17th century landowner to spite England's then super-prude-in-chief Oliver Cromwell.

As you can imagine, not a lot. The Victorians, who were so scandalized by the slightest hint of naughtiness that they even hid curving table legs, buried the Giant's privates and allowed that area to fill up with shrubbery.

They may have, inadvertantly, contributed to the Cerne Abbas figure's racy image. According to an entry at the BBC's H2G2 public access website, he may once have had a navel (along with his well defined six-pack, no doubt). When he was restored, excavators mistook the navel for the tip of the phallus and, as a result, added nine feet to the phallus.

Many guidebooks say that the Cerne Abbas Giant is an ancient symbol of pagan spirituality. A mound beneath his left hand could be the remains of a severed head, a common Celtic symbol. He has also been linked with the Roman figure of Hercules, who was frequently depicted going into battle naked, save for a lion skin on his shoulder.

The National Trust is non-committal about this, pointing out that there is no documentary evidence of the giant before 1644 and that the owner of the hillside at that time was a critic of Oliver Cromwell. He may have cut the giant's two-foot-wide trenches into the chalk downs to satirize the puritanical leader.

The National Trust is hoping that a new technique called Optical Luminescence may reveal the truth. The same technique recently revealed that the Uffington White Horse, another monument carved into the chalk, is 3,000 years old.

During World War II, the giant was camouflaged to prevent the Germans from using him as an aerial landmark. After the war he was once again revealed and since then he is re-chalked and his grass is trimmed (Oh dear, there really is no way to talk about the Cerne Abbas Giant with a straight face, is there?)every 25 years.

Whatever his origins, many couples still regard the Cerne Abbas Giant, in the words of the National Trust, as "a unique aid to fertility" and parents with curious and precocious children have driven just a little bit faster along a certain stretch of the A352 north of Dorchester.