poles – Mick Canning

You have met before.

I’ve posted about him in the past in connection with the musical suite On Windover Hill by Nathan James, but here he gets to star in his own blog post.

There is a fine day’s walk to be had from Polegate, just north of Eastbourne, with a handy railway station, along to Folkington, then up onto the Downs and along past the Long Man and down to Alfriston. From Alfriston there is a very pleasant walk along the Cuckmere river to Litlington where one turns north and, after stopping briefly – say for about an hour – at Church Farm where the Long Man brewery is located, head east back up onto the Downs and another four or five miles back to Polegate, passing through Lullington Heath nature reserve (which always seems to feel a little wilder than most other parts of the Downs, or perhaps that’s just the weather I’ve encountered when I’ve passed that way) to Jevington, then along a mixture of roads and footpaths to finish. It’s a full day’s walk, but well worth the effort.

He’s called the Long Man of Wilmington, or the Wilmington Giant, although he sits on the side of Windover Hill.

The Long Man is a figure cut into the chalk of the South Downs, similar in that respect to the more famous Uffington White Horse and the Cerne Abbas Giant. Like those two figures it is not known when exactly this one was cut, but unlike them it is fairly certain it was comparatively recent. The first known mention of the Long Man was in an illustration drawn in 1710 when he also boasted a face and what looks as though it might be a helmet on the top of his head. It will be noticed that the position of the feet has changed through the years, too, although not dramatically.

I say he is cut into the chalk, although these days the outline is composed of bricks painted white sitting in the hollows of his outline.

The Long Man stands on the scarp slope of the chalk directly facing the village of Wilmington. On the edge of the village nearest him, there are the remains of a fourteenth century priory. It seems difficult to attach much significance to that, although it has been suggested he might have first been created by the monks to while away some idle time. I have to say, I didn’t think monks had that much spare time, though.

There is also a school of thought that thinks the Long Man is actually a Long Woman, suggesting the proportions of the body back this up. Personally, I don’t see this, either.

I’m very curious about the origin of the name Windover Hill itself. It is marked on the 1874 six inch Ordnance Survey map as Winddoor Hill, and in 1779 referred to as Windore Hill. Before this, I believe it was called Wyndore Hill, possibly from the Anglo-Saxon Wind Ora – windy bank. Another possibility involves an old name for the kestrel, which is Windhover, and there are certainly kestrels along the South Downs.

There are a number of theories about the two poles held in the figure’s hands. They would appear to be staves or poles of some sort, and it seems obvious that they were of some significance when the figure was cut. A 1776 drawing shows him with a scythe and rake, although this seems highly unlikely given that the 1710 drawing does not show this.

However, a resistivity survey done in the 1960’s does show disturbance around the tops of the staves, which might indicate either that the staves were originally longer than they are now or that there could even be some truth in the scythe and rake picture. It is always possible these had been added post 1710, I suppose. In 1925 Alfred Watkins published The Old Straight Track, in which he first proposed his theory of ley lines. Although maybe I’ll go into more detail about these another time, the essence of the theory is that many natural features of Britain are connected by invisible lines of power, and that ancient features such as standing stones or burial mounds, as well as more recent features such as churches and castles, were built on these invisible lines as a way of tapping into this power. Watkins talks a lot about how these lines would be surveyed by using two long poles as markers and mentions the Long Man in passing.

I think the jury is definitely out on that one.

Whatever the origins of the figure, though, it is certainly impressive both close up and viewed from a distance.

And another good reason to visit the area? The Long Man brewery at Church farm in nearby Litlington selling fine – nay, very fine – Sussex ales. You might have guessed I’d mention them.

I was talking about hop pockets and pokes last week – and pigs, of course, which was how it all started, but forget the pigs for now. Let’s stick with the pokes and pockets. At the weekend we went for a walk through a part of Kent we hadn’t walked for a few years and part of the walk took us through this field:

This was a hop garden many years ago. Conveniently close to the oast houses so that as soon as the hops were picked they could be taken in and dried before there was any chance of them spoiling. Taken in bagged up in pokes, and once dried shipped out to the brewers in pockets. A word of explanation for those not familiar with these terms: hops are not grown in fields, they are grown in gardens. Not like your or my back garden, but like a field. But a field full of poles. Hop poles. With huge cable-like wires strung between them to support the hop bines as they grow.

When they are ready for harvesting, the bines are pulled down and the hops picked and put in pokes – large sacks (but you knew that, of course. You remembered it from last week). Then once dried they are shovelled into pockets – another size of sack.

And what are the hops for? Making beer, my friend. Lovely beer.

I don’t have a picture of the hop garden from back then, but late one cold, misty, autumn night about thirty years ago, I walked through it and the eeriness was instantly imprinted on me and once I was home I felt compelled to make an oil pastel painting of it (below).

Anyway, as I said I don’t have a photo of the hop garden in question, but this one from Pixabay illustrates very nicely the hop poles and wires with the growing hop bines growing up and across them:

Image by -Rita-👩‍🍳 und 📷 mit ❤ from Pixabay

The poles were supported by wires kept under tension, anchored into the ground around the edge of the garden. Quite a few of these are still in situ around the very edge of the field and just into the woodland and hedgerows bordering it.

In 1872, there were 72,000 acres of land in England growing hops, the majority of these being in Kent, employing over 100,000 seasonal workers at picking time. By 2003, the acreage in Kent was down to just over 1,000 and for the first time ever the county had been overtaken by Herefordshire, which now grew more, although the decline does at least appear to have halted for now. In 2011 there were a total of just over 2,500 acres under cultivation in England but it is such a small number there were fears the industry could die out. Although hops are still used in beer brewing, much of the requirement is imported, especially with a popular shift towards less bitter-tasting beers. But in much the same way that Kent has also lost a huge percentage of its apple orchards, a once rich and diverse farming landscape has become more and more homogenised, with endless huge fields of arable crops and sheep and cattle replacing the hop bines and apple trees.

I spent one autumn apple picking around thirty years ago and the farm I was working on had a large acreage of hop gardens (both apples and hops all sadly gone, now). It was an incredibly busy and bustling time, with our diverse group apple picking – a mixture of locals and Europeans come over for the work – and a traditional mix of workers in the hop gardens; as well as locals, there were a lot of gypsies and possibly still a few people down from London’s East End, which was a traditional way for those workers to make some extra money in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was busy, noisy, very hard work, and a lot of fun.

And, not surprisingly, there are a number of traditional songs about hop picking. So here is the wonderful Shirley Collins and the Albion Dance Band to perform ‘Hopping down in Kent’ especially for you.