Sir,—As one motors from Lewes to Eastbourne, and passes the picturesque village of Wilmington, there becomes visible, sketched boldly in white outline on the steep bleak back of the Downs the gigantic figure of a man, perhaps 22 feet in height, with arms outstretched, ha1ding a spear in each hand. The art is of the crudest—very near akin to that of the Vale of White Horse, or in our own days to the figures which children sketch in white chalk on walls and pavements. I conjecture that this is an early War Trophy of the Saxons (a race much addicted in our own time to hideous memorials), a statue (if I may use the word) of Thor, the God of War, commemorating their conquest of. Andredesceaster (Anderida), where the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says trenchantly, “they slew all,” and the clearing of the Britons out of this region of the Downland, while at the same time it would serve as a “notice” to the remnant of the Britons skulking in the bosky depths of the Andredeslea (the Weald—“the impenetrable wood”) to keep off the Down grass for the future.
Or can any of your readers furnish any other explanation?
Carlton Club, S.W.1.B. SKOTTOWE.
Source info: Checked in library.