The peculiarly-named Gog Magog Hills are a range of low chalk rises extending for several miles to the southeast of the venerable English university town of Cambridge. The hills have large drops between ‘summits’, boasting a particularly distinctive appearance, although photographs have yet to really capture this aspect of the prominences.
Some say that several of the hills are actually man-made, fashioned to represent the breasts of the ‘Mother Goddess.’
In the medieval literature collection Matter of Britain, Gogmagog (as referred to) was a giant (or giants), and according to Geoffrey of Monmouth's influential 12th-century Historia Regum Britanniae, one of the inhabitants of Albion discovered by Brutus of Troy and his men.
Stories say the giant (or giants) still slumber under the hills that bear their name.
Iman Jacob Wilken’s 1990 book Where Troy Once Stood posits that the ancient city of Troy was in fact located in the Gog Magog Downs, (not in the 'Troad' of northwest Turkey), a notion unsurprisingly not taken seriously by scholars. To back up his claim, Wilken cited similarities in the English names of 14 rivers in Cambridgeshire to those named in the Iliad, including the Cam (Scamander) and Thames (Temese).
Historian Tom Holland recommended the work for those who "have had enough of scepticism" about the Trojan War legend and have "wondered why Ilium sounds a bit like Ilford".
The earliest mention of the name Gog Magog for this region is actually to be found in a decree of 1574, forbidding students to visit the Gog Magog Hills on pain of a fine, for some unknown reason.
Excavations around the hills revealed Iron Age defences and some evidence of Bronze Age dwellers. The better-preserved hill fort is Wandlebury Ring, consisting of several concentric ditches and earthen walls, kept in place by wooden palisades. Archaeological discoveries include bronze and iron objects and pottery dating from the Bronze Age.
Famed archaeologist/dowser T. C. Lethbridge (1901-1971) claimed in 1954 to have identified some ancient hill figures buried in the chalk under the surface of the area. These were purported to represent a sun-god, a moon-goddess and a warrior-god.
Lethbridge's claims, however, were controversial and are not widely accepted, including that an ancient hill figure had been carved into the side of Wandlebury Hill, similar to Dorset’s priapic Cerne Abbas Giant.
The figure, if it ever existed, was believed to have been overgrown or deliberately expunged in the 18th century. However, something on the hill was first recorded by Bishop Joseph Hall in 1605 and later by others.
Lethbridge placed markers on chalk marks to be able to draw out the pattern of what he claimed were three distinct hill figures - a Sun god (Gog, Bel, or Belinus), a horse goddess (Magog or Epona), and a warrior figure with sword and shield. The Times reported on Lethbridge's discovery as a "previously lost, three thousand-year-old hill-figure". W. A. Clark in 1997 said the claims were dubious, unconfirmed by either magnetometer and resistivity meter testing. The majority of the committee formed Council for British Archaeology to investigate Lethbridge’s so-called findings concluded he was, "probably confusing geological features", the 'hollows' he detected caused by common geological processes.
Amazon link to Lethbridge’s book, Gogmagog: The Buried Gods:
But, there exists some doubt; even committee member Christopher Hawkes stated Lethbridges’ theories could not conclusively be disproved.
And:
Samuel Cowles, a Cambridge museum assistant, whom Lethbridge met in 1925, told him that when a child he had known an old man who claimed that when he was a boy, the figure of a giant was still visible. According to Lethbridge, Guy Maynard, curator of the Saffron Walden Museum, passed similar reports to Cambridge archaeologist Miles Burkitt (Lethbridge 1957: 6–7). Cowles also told his story of the Wandlebury figure to another Cambridge antiquary, Louis Cobbett. Following up this account, Lethbridge probed and excavated on the south-west slope of Wandlebury in 1954, claiming to have located a goddess in a horse-drawn chariot. Writing to Lethbridge about this discovery in 1954, Cobbett enthused “I am thrilled! I always believed Sammy Cowles’s story” (Cobbett 1954).
From Wandlebury Mysteries Cambridgeshire Ancient Mysteries Group (Occasional Paper 21) by Nigel Pennick:
Lethbridge left Cambridge under a cloud. His opponents, conveniently remembering his student practical jokes of many years before, continued to vilify his name despite the many years of exemplary archaeology which he had carried out previously. His researches after his departure from Cambridge are well-known, and calculated to enrage those entrenched pundits of materialism who reside in the marble halls of Downing Street, Cambridge. The denizens of orthodox archaeology departments to this day believe the comments of the “experts” rather than reading the actual published works of the man himself. Like the denigration of Immanuel Velikovsky, whose cosmological theories received the butt of the astronomical establishment’s wrath, or Alfred Watkins whose ley line theories are yet unacceptable to the establishment, Lethbridge’s very name is sufficient to arouses whole complex of reactions – a sad thing to relate in a field of human endeavour which is supposed to be free of bias.
In 1969, Andrew Munro, who had carried on a correspondence with Lethbridge, attempted to set up a group to preserve what was left of the excavation. Saplings had grown on parts of the ground where Lethbridge had found the effigies of Gog and Wandil, and the excavated effigy of Magog had badly deteriorated, even by then. Members of the International Situationists visited the site and clandestinely destroyed many of the saplings and preliminarily scoured the figure.
Munro wrote: “The only truly scientific course of action would have been to have preserved the whole hillside until such time as the whole question could be re-examined, for example by excavating one of the other two figures. Now, one of them is lost and the other is threatened. The Goddess’s face was recently recut and the Figure generally cleaned up. The mouth has already disappeared – probably due to people walking on the outlines.” That was in 1970 – nine years ago.
The reference to Lethbridge’s ‘student practical jokes’ appears to be either an conscious or unconscious allusion to A. N. Wilson’s 1956 novel Anglo-Saxon Attitudes, where cynical Gilbert Stokesay (Daniel Craig) plants a pagan phallic symbol in the grave of early Anglo-Saxon bishop Eorpwald to embarrass his pompous father, who was conducting the dig.
Later Lethbridge
From Terry Welbourn’s essay Introducing T.C Lethbridge:
At Hole House in the Devonshire village of Branscombe, Tom began the most controversial phase of his career. Here he pursued his study of the old gods of England and began experimenting with dowsing. By using a pendulum as a tool for divination, he developed a theory: every inanimate object had the ability to store information, and somehow capture its history within itself. By using the pendulum as an instrument of detection, he believed he could unlock information ‘recorded’ within any given object.
His explanation of ghosts and ghouls was based on a similar theory, in that rooms, places or atmospheres, could, in the right given conditions, somehow ‘record’ events onto the ether. For these ‘recordings’ to be replayed, it would of course, require the right person and appropriate conditions to be present. His enquiry into occult phenomenon continued up until his untimely death in September 1971. During his time in Devon, he produced eight remarkable books documenting his ongoing experiments concerning ghost and ghoul phenomenon, dreams, ESP and evolution.
Which echoes to great degree Nigel Kneale’s still-disturbing 1972 BBC drama The Stone Tape:
Lethbridge recounted his own ‘supernatural’ experience at Cambridge. During his time studying there in the early 1920s, Lethbridge reportedly saw from his New Court room, a man in an old-fashioned hunting outfit and a top hat he first thought was a college porter - but it wasn’t a Sunday, and porters only wear top hats on Sunday, for some arcane reason. So he apparently concluded it was an apparition.
A friend, also in the room with Lethbridge, failed to see the figure entirely. Despite this, the supposed specter gave Lethbridge his life-long interest in the paranormal and supernatural research.
Not exactly earth-shattering, as paranormal encounters go.
Other ‘facts’ concerning Wandlebury
The fort was later named Wendlesbiri (meaning, ‘Waendal's fort’) by the Anglo Saxons and used as a Hundred council meeting point. Sir Thomas Malory mentions a Wandesborow Castle in Le Morte d'Arthur (1470), possibly referring to the Wandlebury Ring
The Goblin Knight of Wandlebury
Gervase of Tilbury says in his Otia Imperialia (1214): In England, on the borders of the diocese of Ely, there is a town called Cantabrica, just outside of which is a place known as Wandlebria, from the fact that the Wandeli, when ravaging Britain and savagely putting to death the Christians, placed their camp there. Now, on the hill-top where they pitched their tents, is a level space ringed by entrenchments with a single point of entry, like a gate. A very ancient legend exists, preserved in popular tradition, that if a warrior enters this level space at dead of night by moonlight and calls out 'Knight to knight, come forth', he will at once be faced by a warrior armed for fight, who charging horse against horse, will either dismount his adversary or himself be dismounted.
A knight named Osbert once tested the story, appearing in full armor, besting the knight who appeared but was wounded in the thigh by his opponent's javelin. Sir Walter Scott's 1808 poem Marmion mentions something similar when Scottish King Alexander III jousts with a ‘goblin knight’.
Gog Magog (In Bromine Chambers) by Peter Hammill
Rather more soothing: Gog Magog by The Trials of Cato
Appendix
Stephen Arnell’s novel THE GREAT ONE is available on Amazon Kindle: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Great-One-Secret-Memoirs-Pompey-ebook/dp/B0BNLTB2G7