The Cerne Giant

Cerne Abbas is a beautiful little village in the south of Dorset where early religious beliefs managed to find a happy cohabitation with paganism.

     During the late 9th century a Benedictine Abbey was built there to commemorate St Edwold the Hermit who had settled in the valley close to the river Cerne about 150 years previously. This Abbey dominated the surrounding countryside for about 500 years until Henry VIII’s vandals swooped down from the high ground with a view to destruction and the sacking of the Abbey’s wealth. This depredation was pretty complete with just a few of the outhouses surviving amongst the ruins. But luckily, the 14th century Church of St Mary managed to survive, along with the ancient tradition of beer making which made good use of the particularly pure water in the area- one wonders whether the monks had a more pragmatic reason for basing themselves there than the purely religious one! The thought of riotous monks staggering to bed after vespers is indeed a dreadful picture of unbridled sin! And then, over the next few hundred years an energetic market town developed with no less than 14 taverns which served as coaching Inns.

     In chapter 3 of my book Catacombs of theDamned, I look briefly at a typical village with a coaching Inn and a historic church, where there are years of hidden history involved. Much of this is a juxtaposition of Christian/Pagan history.

    This Christianity lives side by side with pagan beliefs in Cerne Abbas which is a fine example of religious pragmatism. The Cerne Giant is a very famous feature of Dorset and is steeped in pagan beliefs.

                                                          

    His history is uncertain but many believe he started out as an iron age (about 300 BC) fertility symbol. Others give him Danish or Roman antecedents. There is even a story that he was drawn to mark the humiliation of one of the early Abbots for “conduct unbecoming”. This appears to have been a precursor to a 21st century problem, “plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose” as Alphonse Karr so succinctly put it. But it does seem reasonable that the Giant was part of a pagan religious centre. Many Christian Churches were built close to such centres in the hope that followers of the old religion would become followers of the new.

    If you are in the South of England, a visit to the Giant (55 metres tall, and 51 metres wide) is a must.

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