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The cutting of huge figures or ‘geoglyphs’ into
the earth of English hillsides has taken place for more than 3,000 years. There
are 56 hill figures scattered around England, with the vast majority on the
chalk downlands of the country’s southern counties. The figures include
giants, horses, crosses and regimental badges. Although the majority of
these geoglyphs date within the last 300 years or so, there are one or two
that are much older.
The most famous of these figures is perhaps also
the most mysterious – the Uffington White Horse in Oxfordshire. The White
Horse has recently been re-dated and shown to be even older than its previously
assigned ancient pre-Roman Iron Age date. More controversial is the date of
the enigmatic Long Man of Wilmington in Sussex. While many historians are
convinced the figure is prehistoric, others believe that it was the work of
an artistic monk from a nearby priory and was created between the 11th
and 15th centuries.
The method of cutting these huge figures was
simply to remove the overlying grass to reveal the gleaming white chalk
below. However, the grass would soon grow over the geoglyph again unless it
was regularly cleaned or scoured by a fairly large team of people. One
reason that the vast majority of hill figures have disappeared is that when
the traditions associated with the figures faded, people no longer bothered
or remembered to clear away the grass to expose the chalk outline.
Furthermore, over hundreds of years the outlines would sometimes change due
to people not always cutting in exactly the same place, thus creating a
different shape to the original geoglyph. The fact that any ancient hill
figures survive at all in England today is testament to the strength and
continuity of local customs and beliefs which, in one case at least, must
stretch back over millennia.
The Uffington White Horse is a unique, stylised
representation of a horse consisting of a long, sleek back, thin disjointed
legs, a streaming tail, and a bird-like beaked head. The elegant creature
almost melts into the landscape. The horse is situated 2.5 km from
Uffington village on a steep slope close to the Late Bronze Age* (c. 7th
century BCE) hillfort of Uffington Castle and below the Ridgeway, a long distance
Neolithic** track.
The Uffington Horse is also surrounded by Bronze
Age burial mounds. It is not far from the Bronze Age cemetery of Lambourn
Seven Barrows, which consists of more than 30 well-preserved burial mounds.
The carving has been placed in such a way as to make it extremely difficult
to see from close quarters, and like many geoglyphs is best appreciated
from the air. Nevertheless, there are certain areas of the Vale of the
White Horse, the valley containing and named after the enigmatic creature,
from which an adequate impression may be gained. Indeed on a clear day the
carving can be seen from up to 30 km away.
The earliest evidence of a horse at Uffington is
from the 1070s CE when ‘White Horse Hill’ is mentioned in documents from
the nearby Abbey of Abingdon, and the first reference to the horse itself
is soon after, in 1190 CE. However, the carving is believed to date back
much further than that. Due to the similarity of the Uffington White Horse
to the stylised depictions of horses on 1st century BCE coins, it had been thought
that the creature must also date to that period.
However, in 1995 Optically Stimulated
Luminescence (OSL) testing was carried out by the Oxford Archaeological
Unit on soil from two of the lower layers of the horse’s body, and from
another cut near the base. The result was a date for the horse’s
construction somewhere between 1400 and 600 BCE – in other words, it had a
Late Bronze Age or Early Iron Age origin.
The latter end of this date range would tie the
carving of the horse in with occupation of the nearby Uffington hillfort,
indicating that it may represent a tribal emblem marking the land of the
inhabitants of the hillfort. Alternatively, the carving may have been
carried out during a Bronze or Iron Age ritual. Some researchers see the
horse as representing the Celtic*** horse goddess Epona, who was worshipped
as a protector of horses, and for her associations with fertility. However,
the cult of Epona was not imported from Gaul (France) until around the
first century CE. This date is at least six centuries after the Uffington Horse
was probably carved. Nevertheless, the horse had great ritual and economic
significance during the Bronze and Iron Ages, as attested by its depictions
on jewellery and other metal objects. It is possible that the carving
represents a goddess in native mythology, such as Rhiannon, described in
later Welsh mythology as a beautiful woman dressed in gold and riding a
white horse.
The fact that geoglyphs can disappear easily,
along with their associated rituals and meaning, indicates that they were
never intended to be anything more than temporary gestures. But this does
not lessen their importance. These giant carvings are a fascinating glimpse
into the minds of their creators and how they viewed the landscape in which
they lived.
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