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Uffington White Horse

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Ancient History,
Classical History and Mythology

                       Whitehorse Hill
   The White Horse as seen from an altitude of 700 metres
   Elevation         261  m (856  ft)
   Location          Oxfordshire, England
   Prominence        79 m
   Topo map          OS Landranger 174
   OS grid reference SU301866
   Listing           County Top

   The Uffington White Horse is a highly stylised hillfigure, 374 feet
   (110 m) long, cut out of the turf on the upper slopes of Uffington
   Castle, a largely Iron Age hill fort near The Ridgeway, in the civil
   parish of Uffington in the English county of Oxfordshire (formerly
   Berkshire). It is located some five miles (eight kilometres) west of
   the town of Wantage. The hill upon which the figure is drawn is called
   White Horse Hill and the hills immediately surrounding it, the White
   Horse Hills.

History of the figure

   The figure has been shown to date back some 3,000 years, to the Bronze
   Age, based on optically stimulated luminescence dating carried out
   following archaeological investigations in 1994. These studies produced
   three dates ranging between 1400 and 600 BC. Numerous other prominent
   prehistoric sites are located nearby, notably Wayland's Smithy, a long
   barrow less than two kilometres to the west.

   The cutting exposes the underlying chalk making the horse a striking
   figure. Up until the late 19th century the horse was scoured every
   seven years as part of a more general local fair held on the hill.
   However, when the regular cleaning is halted the figure quickly becomes
   obscured. It has always needed frequent work, currently by English
   Heritage, for the figure to remain visible. Best views of the horse are
   obtained from the north, particularly from around the village of Great
   Coxwell.
   Layout of the Uffington White Horse as seen from above
   Enlarge
   Layout of the Uffington White Horse as seen from above

   It has long been debated whether the chalk figure is intended to
   represent a horse or some other animal. However, it has been called a
   horse since the eleventh century at least. An Abingdon cartulary,
   written by monks on vellum, between 1072 and 1084, refers to "mons albi
   equi" at Uffington ("the White Horse Hill").

   The horse is thought to represent a tribal symbol perhaps connected
   with the builders of Uffington Castle. A more modern theory suggests
   that the stylised horse figure acted as a sign to people passing on The
   Ridgeway advertising horses being sold or catered for at the hillfort.
   It is quite similar to horses depicted on pre-Roman British coinage and
   the Marlborough bucket. For centuries, however, local people have
   maintained that it is a portrait of the dragon slain by Saint George on
   the nearby Dragon Hill.

   The Blowing Stone, a perforated sarsen stone, which lies in a garden in
   Kingston Lisle, 2km away and which produces a note when blown through,
   is thought possibly to have been moved from the White Horse site, in
   1750.

   The steep sided dry valley below the horse is known as the Manger and
   legend says that the horse grazes there at night. Terraces at the
   bottom of this valley are the result of Medieval farming.

   In August 2002, the figure was defaced with the addition of a rider and
   three dogs by members of the "Real Countryside Alliance" (Real CA). The
   act was denounced by the Countryside Alliance.

The Uffington Horse in popular culture

   Map sources for the Uffington White Horse at grid reference SU301866
   Map sources for the Uffington White Horse at grid reference SU301866
     * G.K. Chesterton's poem The Ballad of the White Horse proposes a
       Christian interpretion to the continual scouring needed to maintain
       the impression in the chalk over the intervening millennia.
     * Richard Doyle, a cartoonist and illustrator of Punch satirical
       magazine fame illustrated the 1859 book The Scouring of the White
       Horse by Thomas Hughes, the author of Tom Brown's School Days. The
       book mentions both the horse and the Blowing Stone.
     * The design of the Uffington Horse was used as the album cover of
       the 1982 album English Settlement by English rock group XTC, who
       come from the nearby town of Swindon.
     * The White Horse appears in the top right hand corner of the back of
       the Nirvana CD In Utero.
     * It also featured in the 1992 Vincent Ward-directed movie Map of the
       Human Heart.
     * It appears as a hill figure and as a silver necklace worn by
       Tiffany Aching in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel, A Hat Full of
       Sky.
     * The Uffington Horse is the symbol of Wessex Hall at the University
       of Reading, adopted in 1920 and still in use today.
     * The Uffington White horse is often presentad as an image of Epona
       in popular works on Neopaganism, based on stylistic similarity with
       horses depicted on Iron Age British and Gaulish coinage; although
       the dating makes this very unlikely. There may also be an
       assumption that Epona statues depicted a white horse (the colour is
       unknown and this seems to be a confusion with Rhiannon).

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uffington_White_Horse"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
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