British Giants in Folklore and Legend: A Guide to England's Most Famous Mythical Beasts

By Fire Pud the Dragon (Mythical Creature Expert and Part-Time Castle Historian)

Stories about giants have helped to explain landscapes that seemed too large for ordinary people to create. Ancient earthworks, dramatic cliffs, huge boulders and deep valleys have all been attributed to giants long before archaeology could provide alternative explanations. Back in the olden days giants were very, very busy creatures, particularly in England.

They also caused a lot of disruption.

They have also represented something universal in storytelling: enormous obstacles that ordinary people had to overcome. Whether it was Jack facing a giant in a castle above the clouds or Corineus wrestling Gogmagog on a Cornish cliff, the story is always the same. Something small facing off against something enormous and winning against the odds.

It is part of the HUGE appeal of giants.

I've put together an overview of my favourite English giants, where they came from and importantly where you can still find them!

1. Gogmagog: The last giant of Albion

According to Geoffrey of Monmouth's twelfth-century History of the Kings of Britain, Albion was once inhabited by a race of giants before the arrival of Brutus of Troy. Gogmagog was the last survivor of a mythical race of giants, which the Trojans spared (after killing off all the other giants) so that he could fight Brutus' champion, Corineus, in a wrestling match.

From what I've heard it was an epic matchup. The giant broke three of Corineus' ribs, but instead of crying about it, Corineus seized the giant, ran to the nearest cliff, and hurled him into the sea below. That is a pretty impressive feat of strength. The rock from which he was thrown became known as Langnagog, the Giant's Leap. As a reward, Corineus was given the western part of the island, which came to be called Cornwall after him.

Britain's origin story, in other words, begins with a man throwing a giant off a cliff in Cornwall.

Where to find him: The exact location of the Giant's Leap is debated, but Plymouth Hoe is the traditional site. And there is a chalk hill figure nearby known as the Gogmagog Hills near Cambridge, which is a little distance from Cornwall but the giant's influence clearly stretched quite far.

2. Gog and Magog: The guardians of London

This is where Gogmagog splits, somewhat mysteriously, into two giants. The effigies of Gogmagog and Corineus were used in English pageantry for centuries and eventually became the guardian statues at the Guildhall in London, earning the names Gog and Magog (there really wasn't much imagination in the names here).

Three sets of statues have stood in the Guildhall across the centuries. One was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. Another fell victim to rats and damp. A third was destroyed during World War II. The current statues date from 1953, replacing earlier versions lost during the Blitz.

Where to find them: The Guildhall, City of London, which for giant fans is free to visit. Gog and Magog are also paraded through the streets each November during the Lord Mayor's Show. They remain, after nine hundred years, surprisingly good at their jobs.

3. Goram and Vincent: The Giants who built Bristol

Medieval people often explained dramatic landscape features through giant legends, and Bristol's most famous example concerns the rival giants Goram and Vincent, who were brothers and fell in love with the same woman (we see where this is heading already). Her name was Avona, and she promised to marry whichever of them could drain the great lake that once stretched from Bradford-on-Avon to Bristol.

Goram chose to dig north through the Henbury Hills.

Vincent chose south through the Durdham Downs.

The work was hard and hot. Goram drank heavily, fell asleep in his stone chair, and never finished. Vincent kept going, carved the Avon Gorge, drained the lake, and won Avona's hand. Goram, heartbroken, threw himself into the Severn Estuary and drowned, his head and shoulders now visible as the islands of Flat Holm and Steep Holm.

The Avon Gorge, one of the most spectacular geological features in England, spanned today by Brunel's Clifton Suspension Bridge, only exists because a giant won a race!

Where to find them: Blaise Castle Estate in Bristol has Goram's Chair and his Soap Dish, natural rock formations connected to the legend. The Avon Gorge is Vincent's monument. The islands in the Severn are Goram's last resting place.

4. Cormoran: The giant of St Michael's Mount

In those days, the Mount of St Michael in Cornwall was the home of a giant named Cormoran, he was gigantic and the terror of all the countryside. He lived in a cave on the rocky Mount, wading across at low tide to the mainland when he wanted food, carrying whatever he wanted back, sheep, pigs, cows, oxen. Let's face it who was going to stop him?!

Cormoran's wife Cormelian helped him build the Mount by carrying granite blocks in her apron, and the two giants are said to have thrown boulders back and forth with a giant on Trencrom Hill for a bit of fun. This is why there are so many loose boulders scattered across west Cornwall.

Cormoran was eventually killed by Jack the Giant Killer, who dug a big pit near the Mount one night, covered it with sticks and straw, then blew his horn to wake the giant. Cormoran rushed out in fury and fell straight into the trap, whereupon Jack beheaded him with an axe. The giant fell (literally) for the oldest trick in the book - a hole covered with sticks and straw. It was a good job most giants lacked a bit upstairs.

Where to find him: St Michael's Mount, Marazion, Cornwall. Still there. Now a National Trust castle and garden. Accessible at low tide on foot, or by boat. The heart stone Jack allegedly uncovered is reportedly visible on the path up, if you know where to look.

5. Yernagate: The giant who sent a man to the moon

I almost didn't include dear old Yernagate, he's the one most people haven't heard of. Yernagate was actually the guardian giant of the Hampshire forests. The Anglo-Saxon name for the New Forest area was Jettenwald, which means "the wood of the giants." The connection between this landscape and its enormous inhabitants was very, very old indeed.

Legend has it that Yernagate allowed a man to collect a small amount of wood from the forest. When he returned and found the man had felled an enormous quantity of trees, the furious giant picked him up and threw him so high that he landed on the Moon, giving rise to the legend of the Man in the Moon. Yernagate then lay down to take a nap, covering himself with earth, forming a mound that became known as Yernagate's Nap.

The Man in the Moon. One of the oldest and most universal folk images in human culture. Started, according to Hampshire tradition, by a giant who didn't like deforestation and had a very forceful approach to conservation - if only he was around in the Amazon Rainforest today!

Where to find him: Yernagate's Nap is a Bronze Age earthwork within Little Linford Inclosure in the New Forest. Worth the walk. The Man in the Moon remains visible from everywhere on a clear night - if you look closely enough you can see him regretting his decision to fell so many trees.

6. Blunderbore: The giant with the enchanted castle

After Jack killed Cormoran, a giant (delightfully) named Blunderbore, who kept an enchanted castle in the midst of a lonely forest, vowed revenge. Hearing that Jack was travelling through the area, he found him sleeping by a fountain, carried him to the castle, and locked him in a chamber. The chamber's floor was covered with the bones of previous visitors. The castle did not get agood review on TripAdvisor.

Jack, being Jack, escaped, whilst he was getting his brother Rebecks the Welsh giant to come round to help eat Jack. Blunderbore did not survive the encounter with Jack when he returned, neither did Rebecks. Later Cornish versions of the Jack the Giant Killer legends place Blunderbore near Ludgvan, close to Penzance, making him a near-neighbour of Cormoran. It appears that the far west of Cornwall was, by any reasonable historical measure, an extremely hazardous area to travel through in the form of human-eating giants.

Where to find him: Ludgvan, near Penzance. The village is real, the castle is not — but the landscape of West Cornwall, with its dramatic granite outcrops and sudden coastline, still looks convincingly like somewhere a giant might have chosen to live.

7. The Cerne Abbas Giant: Britain's biggest mystery

Some giants appear in stories. Some appear in fairy tales. And some are carved into the side of a hill where everyone can see them. The Cerne Abbas Giant is one of Britain's most famous giant figures, a chalk outline cut into a hillside above the village of Cerne Abbas in Dorset. Standing around 180 feet (55 metres) tall, he carries a large club and has been puzzling historians for centuries.

The mystery is that nobody knows exactly who made him.

For years people suggested he might be prehistoric, Roman, or Saxon. More recent archaeological work using optically stimulated luminescence dating (I doubt I will use a big word like that in any future blogs) suggests the giant was probably created sometime between AD 700 and 1100, placing him in the late Anglo-Saxon or early medieval period.

That makes him old. Very old. But not quite as old as some people hoped. As for who he represents, theories include an ancient fertility figure, a local giant from lost folklore, or even a piece of political satire. The truth is that historians are still debating it. It is not often that a giant can remain mysterious for a thousand years.

Where to find him: Cerne Abbas, Dorset. The giant is best viewed from the opposite hillside or from designated viewpoints around the village. He remains one of Britain's most famous chalk figures and is protected as a scheduled monument.

My final thought

Humans spend a surprising amount of time insisting giants do not exist. This seems a bold claim considering they named hills after them, built statues of them, wrote stories about them, and occasionally gave them credit for creating entire gorges.

The evidence speaks for itself. Britain was absolutely full of giants!

Join Jack's Shield Wall — the free Good Knight newsletter — at thegoodknightbook.com/shield-wall. New members this month receive a free Guide to Medieval Insults. Several of which are appropriate for giants. "Thou great fopdoodle" is our current favourite. ⚔️🏰