The Giant's Hedge

The Giant’s Hedge is a vast earthwork that stretches for nearly ten miles between Looe and Lerryn in southeast Cornwall. In places it still rises to twelve feet, though records from Victorian times suggest it once stood as high as sixteen feet. Where best preserved, the Hedge is faced with stone and bordered by a ditch. It is thought to have marked and defended the boundary of a Cornish kingdom, its line running between the waters of the River Fowey and the West Looe River, protecting the land in between. Folklore, as always in Cornwall, has its own account. A fragment of an old rhyme survives, telling us: “Jack the Giant having nothing to do, built a hedge from Lerryn to Looe.” No one remembers Jack now, nor why he built it, but the tale lingers in the trees and hedgerows. Some say if you sit quietly by the Fowey at Lerryn, and listen with an open heart, the trees may whisper their own stories—of love, of long-forgotten lives, sheltered beneath their ancient canopy. Historically, the monument falls into seven separate areas, covering about fifteen kilometres in total length. Around three kilometres have been lost, with 2.8 kilometres protected in varying degrees. In some places it survives as a ditch with a bank to the south; elsewhere only as a scarp, its ditch filled in. At its best, the bank measures 3.5 metres wide and two metres high, with the ditch alongside up to three metres across and nearly a metre deep. The course winds below hill crests, through four parishes, and was long thought by some antiquarians, like Borlase, to be a Roman road. Today, however, it is considered a pre-Norman boundary. A variant of the local rhyme even credits the Devil himself: “One day, the Devil, having nothing to do, built a great hedge from Lerryn to Looe.” The route has also been called Cornwall’s oldest road, perhaps as much as four thousand years old. In places it cuts so deeply into the earth that bedrock is exposed, worn into channels by centuries of water flow. Fields sit high above its banks, making the term “hedge” seem almost misleading—these are earthworks of giant scale. This depth and scale is what inspired its name. Its presence also recalls other discoveries, such as the ancient cobbled track uncovered in 2013 near the Hurlers stone circles on Bodmin Moor, described at the time as Britain’s oldest pavement. The Giant’s Hedge, marked on Ordnance Survey maps, is no less remarkable, though parts of it remain hidden, far from paths and only witnessed by sheep and the occasional wanderer. For archaeologists, the significance of the Giant’s Hedge lies not in folklore but in its connection to prehistoric landscapes. English Heritage note that the earthwork follows the line of an ancient track, running past Bronze Age barrows, suggesting it may have originated in that period. Over the centuries, sections have disappeared, while others have been absorbed into lanes and field boundaries. Yet where it survives, the Hedge still carves its course across the land, a visible reminder of Cornwall’s deep past. Whether seen as a kingdom’s defence, a Bronze Age track, or the work of a bored giant, the Giant’s Hedge remains one of the great mysteries stitched into Cornwall’s landscape.