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Cheese company ‘castrates’ the Cerne Abbas giant

Someone holding up a wheel of the cheese with the 'castrated' Cerne Abbas giant on the packaging - BNPS
Someone holding up a wheel of the cheese with the 'castrated' Cerne Abbas giant on the packaging - BNPS

The Cerne Abbas giant is famed for its prominent male anatomy, but there are concerns that a company has sold his features short.

A cheesemaker has been accused of “castrating” the giant to make its branding more palatable.

The Oxford Cheese Company founded by a French baron crafted a “Cerne Abbas Cheddar” named after the Dorset landmark, with an image of the vast chalk figure used on its packaging.

However, the giant’s male anatomy has not been included in this image, and locals incensed by the perceived emasculation have accused the company of mutilating their giant.

There are further accusations that the packaging has omitted any distinctly male features in order to avoid causing offence.

The Cerne Abbas hill drawing - Hulton Archive
The Cerne Abbas hill drawing - Hulton Archive

Vic Irvine, the head brewer at the Cerne Abbas Brewery in Dorset whose branding sports a fully intact giant, said it was “abhorrent to castrate him”.

“We love our giant here and defacing him like this is like throwing paint over Nelson’s Column.

“It is clearly a binary giant who has a large phallus. It’s that simple.

“If you don’t like it, don’t use our giant. The whole thing makes me really cross, I’m incandescent with rage.”

A statement on the brewery’s Facebook page added: “How dare you use our giant on your marketing and then remove his genitalia so to not offend the wokefolk.”

Baron Robert Pouget De St Victor founded the Oxford Cheese Company – noted for its Oxford Blue – in 1986, and the cheddar named for the historic hill drawing is a more recent creation.

The giant chalk figure outside the village of Cerne Abbas is believed to have been created between 700 and 1100 AD, with various alterations made over the centuries. It stands at 180ft tall and sports a 36ft phallus.

The decision of an Oxfordshire-based company not to include this anatomic detail on packaging for its Cerne Abbas Cheddar has caused concern among local Dorset politicians in a burgeoning inter-county row.

‘It makes a mockery of it’

Alistair Chisholm, the mayor of nearby Dorchester, said: “That’s just wrong. The whole point is that he is depicted the way he is, which is what makes people come to see him.

“It makes a mockery of it. It’s like filling in Durdle Door and making it a solid block of rock.

“His member is what makes him magnificent. It would just be plain wrong to make him amorphous.

“The whole point is that it provokes a reaction. Remove his member and he is just a white line on the hillside.”

Jill Hayes, a Dorchester councillor, added: “The fact that they have chopped his bits off is very strange.”

“It’s even stranger that they would use our iconic landmark instead of one of their own.”

Paul Watson, the cellar master for the Oxford Cheese Company, said that the altered giant may be a result of keeping the packaging design simple.

He said: “The original owner of the company chose that image because it is so memorable.

“I’m not sure exactly why he isn’t whole on some of the cheeses but I suspect it is to make sure the label doesn’t get too cluttered. On larger cheeses, I think all of him is included.”

The unexposed image of the giant may be closer to the original, as recent research revealed that the phallus was actually added to an initially trouser-wearing giant at some point in the 17th century.