Chasing the Giant’s Feet

We’ve recently speculated over the appearance of a crop circle resembling giant footprints close to the Wilmington Long Man in East Sussex.

We speculated that the footprints may have been linked to an advertising campaign for the Reflo sportswear company as their recent YouTube films featured giant footprints on a beach.

Long time croppie Barry Reynolds has contacted us to suggest the footprints may still have been commissioned as an advertising stunt, but for a more local company. He writes:

I’m placing my bets and wondering if the Wilmington Long Man feet were created by the Long Man Brewery. Reasons for this are as follows (see attached pics):

• The field the feet were in is part of Church Farm and is owned / farmed by the Long Man Brewery

• On 16th July the brewery posted a photo on their FB feed of the exact part of the field the feet would appear in 8 days later

  

• On 31st July, three days after the feet appeared, the brewery posted a photo on their FB feed of them harvesting the field the feet were in. The crop was malting barley

  

• On 1st August, the brewery posted “We’re (sic) definitely got a few exciting brews coming soon!!” in the comments of the above post

  

• The Long Man Brewery website (longmanbrewery.com) has a photo of the exact spot the feet appeared on, on their homepage. Apart from featuring the Long Man on all their beer and merchandise, the brewery already sells a Pale Ale called ‘Rising Giant’

  

• They created this creepy video of the Long Man as an April Fool in 2024 – https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5NTfCiIkyk/

We like Barry’s reasoning on this and have performed a small piece of fact checking. The farmer at Church Farm is Duncan Ellis, who is the founder and one of the major shareholders at the Long Man Brewery.

Local newspaper The Argus has run a piece on the footprints and note that their appearance has not been reported to the police as criminal damage. Interesting, though proof of nothing.

Let’s see what happens with this one. Maybe something, maybe nothing. At least it’s a little interest and amusement at the very end of what has been an otherwise wretched season.