The chalky figures festooning our landscape might be a mystery, but they delight us nonetheless
The abstract white steed of Uffington and the excitable giant of Cerne Abbas may be Britain’s most famous chalk icons, but our landscape is filled with plenty more
Just below Uffington Castle on an Oxfordshire stretch of the Ridgeway, a 360ft-long white horse gallops across the landscape. Its striking shape defies its age, for the Uffington White Horse has been recently dated using OSL (Optically Stimulated Luminescence) to the late Bronze or Iron Age, making it the oldest chalk hill figure in the country.
In Cerne Abbas, Dorset, the well-endowed naked giant dates from the late Saxon period — the only other human figure in the country is the more modest, Tudor-era Long Man of Wilmington in East Sussex, who surveys the South Downs clutching long poles like a modern-day Nordic walker. They are three of the most celebrated of more than 50 mythical figures and symbols tattooed on to our landscape. Many more have been neglected and some have disappeared altogether, but the ones that survive are synonymous with mystery and folklore.
White horses, long recognised as symbols of power and freedom, make up the vast majority of hill figures or ‘geoglyphs’. Of an estimated total of 16, eight can be found on the chalky downs of Wiltshire, where the undulating landscape provides the perfect canvas. Many were created from the 1780s to the 1860s, when carved white horses became a landscaping craze and landowners competed to ‘out-white-horse’ each other in size and shape.
One such image was the Cherhill White Horse, created by Dr Christopher Alsop, who assembled a group of men to form a 220ft-long figure as he stood in the valley below bellowing instructions through a megaphone. The horse’s eye, slightly more than 4ft across, was originally filled with upturned glass bottles, giving it a distinct twinkle, and the landmark was said to be eagerly anticipated by passengers on the long carriage journey from Bath to London. Today, it is still clearly visible from the A4.
The Westbury White Horse, one of eight chalky steeds to be found in Wiltshire.
Passengers on the train from London Paddington to the West Country can enjoy fine views of the largest and oldest of all the Wiltshire horses. The Westbury White Horse was believed to have been originally cut in the late 17th century to commemorate a Viking defeat at the Battle of Ethandun in 878AD and it is the only horse pictured standing still. The current horse, 180ft tall and 170ft wide, was cut in 1778 and covered in white cement in the 1950s. Blazing white and tucked into the folds of the hill, it is forever tethered to Eric Ravilious’s 1939 painting of the same name.
Further south, outside Weymouth, the Osmington White Horse depicts George III in the saddle and, in the north, the Kilburn White Horse in the North York Moors, created in 1857, is the largest stallion of all: 318ft long and 220ft high. Dating the older chalk figures is made more difficult due to the lack of relevant artefacts. The origins of the 180ft giant that looms over Cerne Abbas eluded archaeologists for centuries. In the absence of scientific facts, speculations about the club wielding figure flourished. Was he the demi-god Hercules? An ancient fertility symbol? Or a lampoon of Oliver Cromwell?
However, in 2021, in a process that measures how much time has elapsed since soil has been buried, together with an examination of snail shells, the giant was revealed as being late Saxon. ‘I was genuinely surprised,’ admits Dr Martin Papworth, leading archaeologist at the Cerne Abbas dig, ‘and the arguments continue. I like to think of him as the abbey’s founding saint, his outstretched arm guiding pilgrims from Sherborne. The public love him — it’s his rudeness. Every news story turns into a media event.’
Morris Men dance at the foot of the Long Man of Wilmington.
In addition to horses and giants, a bewildering array of beasts stalk our uplands, including an enormous lion — dug into the Dunstable Downs in Bedfordshire in 1933, to advertise the location of Whipsnade Zoo — and the gargantuan Bulford Kiwi, strangely out of place on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire and cut in 1919 by homesick New Zealand troops. More mementos of military life can be found on Fovant Down — also in Wiltshire — where soldiers returning from France during the First World War cut regimental badges into the grass in remembrance of fallen colleagues.
Other hill figures are less easily explained, such as the Whiteleaf Cross in the Chilterns. The origins of the figure, which consists of a large white cross on a triangular base, are unknown; among the theories are a Saxon celebration of a victory over the Danes, a phallic symbol later Christianised and a 17th-century alternative to a village cross. Stranger still is the Watlington White Mark, a triangular obelisk in Oxfordshire, cut by a local landowner to give an optical illusion of a church spire.
With its pointed muzzle, flowing tail and abstract shape, the Uffington White Horse is quite unlike other geoglyphs. Best viewed from above, it was once thought to commemorate King Alfred’s victory over the Danes, but it has now been placed between 800BC and 600BC. ‘We still don’t know for certain its original purpose,’ says National Trust archaeologist Adrian Cox. ‘It could have been a way of marking territory or as a tribal symbol.’ Its remarkable survival is thanks to the dedication of generations of local communities who have looked after it with organised ‘scourings’, which took place roughly every seven years. In the 17th century, these cleaning events became part of a rowdy festival known as the Pastime and included cheese rolling, horse-racing and a pipe-smoking competition for women. Today, the conservation efforts are more restrained and organised by the National Trust.
The Vale of the White Horse by Eric Ravilious is one of his most well-known works.
Despite scientific advances, chalk figures remain mysterious and continue to attract folklore and ritual. At Cerne Abbas, couples make pilgrimages to the site to ensure they are blessed with children. Morris men dance at the Long Man of Wilmington and the Westbury horse is only one in a herd of white stallions believed to leave their hills at midnight to drink water.
Artists and writers have been similarly attracted to chalk hill figures. Eric Ravilious created his painting of White Horse Hill — 1939’s The Vale of the White Horse — as part of a series of chalk-figure works, Frank Dobson’s 1931 poster of the Cerne Abbas giant included a passing cloud to mask the giant’s priapic glory and Paul Nash painted the Whiteleaf Cross. Many figures are used as business logos, appearing on everything from plumbers’ vans to beer labels. (In 2016, the Cerne Abbas Brewery had temporarily to conceal the giant’s integrity with a fig leaf when it was for sale in a Parliament bar.)
Over the centuries, some hill carvings have survived better than others. Among those lost are the Red Horse of Tysoe in Warwickshire, the chalk giants of Devon’s Plymouth Hoe and the first Pewsey White Horse in Wiltshire. All the country’s figures were covered up during the Second World War to stop them being used by the Luftwaffe for navigation and several have undergone adaptations from pranksters — not least a face mask for the Long Man of Wilmington during the covid pandemic, a giant Homer Simpson painted next to the Cerne Abbas giant and a temporary jockey for the Uffington White Horse for Cheltenham week.
The drawings evolve over time, with every cleaning and re-chalking, and so do our interpretations of them. At Uffington, where it all began, secrets remain. ‘The horse is a symbol of continuity and enchantment,’ wrote the archaeologist David Miles in his 2019 book The Land of the White Horse, ‘a place where the different pasts remain present… the horse remains a wonder, a myth for modern times.’
