Anonymous artist leaves head of cannibal Sawney Bean deep in Scottish death cave

Deep in the sea cave where he is said to have pickled and eaten 1,000 people, the ‘head’ of cannibal Sawney Bean has emerged.

An anonymous artist has left the sculpture of one of Scotland’s most horrifying figures at Bennane Cave between Girvan and Ballantrae, from where the cannibal and his family conducted their 25-year reign of terror.

The artwork now peers out the darkness of the cave, which is reached only at low tide and by a challenging walk down a cliffside.

The mysterious sculpture of Sawney Bean has appeared at Bennane Cave in South Ayrshire. PIC: John Devlin | John Devlin

The artist, believed to be from Central Scotland, has linked the location to legend once more, with it hoped future works will revive the best - and very worst - of Scotland’s characters in the locations where they made their name.

Many versions of the Sawney Bean story exist, with some believing he was at work in the 1400s while others have framed the story to the 17th century.

What is sure is the tale of the tanner from East Lothian who lived in the cave with his wife, Agnes, where they raised 14 children and 32 grandchildren born through incest.

Peering out of the darkness, the Sawney Bean sculpture has been left by an anonymous artist. Picture: John Devlin | John Devlin

With a rapidly growing family, the Beans took to murder and cannibalism to survive.

The family are said to have preyed on passing travellers who they robbed and hacked to death before pickling them and storing them in the cave, with their deeds going long unseen since their home was often cut off by the tide.

The gruesome lives of the Beans unravelled when they tried to attack a man at a fair, with the would-be victim fighting back with a pistol and reporting the crime to magistrates.

The 17th-century version of the story states that James VI, when alerted to the crimes, dispatched 400 men and a large pack of bloodhounds to find the family.

Taken in chains to Edinburgh, the males were executed by having their hands and feet chopped off and then bleeding to death, while the females were burned at the stake.

The story became hugely popular in the late 1700s when it was published in England to capitalise on widespread prejudice against the Scots after the Jacobite risings.

Indeed, the name Sawney was a popular English name for a cartoon-like barbarous Scot.

Regardless of when the story emerged, Sawney Bean has long loomed large in the imagination.

Wes Craven used the cave-dwelling cannibal as inspiration for his film The Hills Have Eyes. In 2012, a low-budget Scottish adaptation of the story came in the film Sawney: Flesh of Man starring David Hayman.

The modern-day version had Sawney prowling the streets of Glasgow in a black cab looking for his victims, instead of on horseback. And now, an anonymous artist has entered the cannibal’s cave.