The Kent landscape that inspired Stig of the Dump connects a beloved children’s book to eerie local legends of time-slips and ghostly figures, writes NEIL NIXON
The story is so well known from two television adaptations and a book – first published in 1963 – that currently stands at over two million sales.
Bored and unhappy at having to stay with his grandparents somewhere in the chalk downlands of southern England, Barney ventures out and accidentally falls into an old chalk pit, crashing through the roof of a den.
This leads to his meeting the den’s owner – Stig – a caveman who recycles the growing tonnage of rubbish in the pit to use in his own life. The pair become friends despite difficulties with language.
The story ends in a curious collision of conclusion and inconclusion. Barney and his sister Lou find themselves transported back in time to a moment in which they help Stig and his tribe complete an arrangement of four standing stones.
The implication being that time travel – at least in that chalk downland area – is possible in both directions and Stig has simply become trapped in the present day.
The book doesn’t ever decide if Stig is alone in this situation, or what might happen to him when – inevitably – the chalk pit becomes filled with rubbish.
The author Clive King spent part of his childhood in Kent and the part played in the story by chalk pits and standing stones has echoes of the North Downs landscape he would have known.
So much so that one local resident, Fred Pocknall, who grew up at Butlers Place, now part of New Ash Green, felt King had chronicled the way things were when they were both young in that area.
Small but significant collections of stones are also part of this landscape with the best-known examples including Coldrum Long Barrow near Ryarsh, a known Neolithic burial site, and the stones at Kit’s Coty, next to the famously haunted and mysterious Blue Bell Hill.
Some truly bizarre links with the fiction of Stig of the Dump were unearthed by Kent-based writer and researcher on the paranormal Neil Arnold and feature in his book Kent Urban Legends (2013).
He notes one instance of the Territorial Army encountering a “man-beast” in the village of Burham adjacent to Blue Bell Hill, though this is beaten for strangeness by a 21st-century tale.
In 2003 a Maidstone resident, who he names as Corriene, was near Kit’s Coty with friends when she noticed a figure moving towards her uphill in a focused and aggressive manner. As the male figure drew closer, she could clearly see his hairy body and the fact he appeared to have rabbit skins around his waist and “furred boots” on his feet.
An image very much in keeping with the pictures we have today of Neolithic men involved in hunting. Corriene, who Arnold describes as having “psychic ability”, believed the man wasn’t literally flesh and blood but was some “type of spectral warrior from the past.” In some ways a vivid echo of the fictional Stig.
Blue Bell Hill and its surrounds are so populated with paranormal claims. Apart from the world-famous ghostly hitchhiker, the area is prime territory for sightings of Kent’s population of alien big cats, and Corriene’s tale of the Neolithic warrior time-slip isn’t the only self-standing account of something else truly strange.
Clive King – who died at the age of 94 in 2024 – wasn’t active in the paranormal community, and if one theme runs through all his work it’s a combined quality of being restless and rootless.
His early life and subsequent career saw regular moves. As part of his working for the British Council he went to places like Damascus and Madras. He wasn’t a full-time writer until a decade after Stig of the Dump was first published.
However, his ability to respond to local conditions is central to both his career history and his writing, and where his best-known work is concerned, the ability to bring a time-slip and its implications to life continues to enthral readers to this day.
Did you grow up reading Stig of the Dump or visiting the landscapes that inspired it? Share your memories in the comments below!
