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"The tallest man in England is a Sussex man - the famous Long Man of Wilmington, a gigantic figure, 226 feet long, cut in the turf on the steep northern flank of Windover Hill, facing Wilmington Priory.
The giant must have remained locally popular, for only repeatedly scraping away the turf could have kept him in existence through the centuries so that he survived, however dimly, until he was given his permanent outline in late Victorian times. Scouring such a large figure must have been a considerable task, and it is probably fair to assume that it was a communal undertaking, enlivened by sports and merrymaking (as at the famous scouring of the While Horse of Uffington, in Berkshire), but unfortunately no records of such activity have survived.
Naturally, a local legend grew up to explain how such a figure was there at all. According to this a living giant had once had his home on Windover Hill, but had been killed, and the figure was either a memorial to him to the actual outline of his body, drawn round him as he lay dead on the slope."
- Simpson, J (2009) Folklore of Sussex. Third edition. Gloucestershire: The History Press.
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