The Devizes Millennium White Horse

Following on from my previous visits to the Westbury, Cherhill, Broad Town and Hackpen white horses in Wiltshire, here is another of the county's white horses, this time on Roundway Hill on the outskirts of Devizes.

The Devizes White Horse is also known as the Devizes Millennium White Horse as it was cut in 1999 as part of the celebrations for the new millennium. The Devizes horse (which is approximately 150 ft by 150 ft) is unique amongst Wiltshire's white horses as it is the only one that faces to the right, all of the rest face in the opposite direction.

The Devizes Millennium White Horse is not the first white horse to grace Devizes. In 1845 a local shoemaker cut a white horse into Roundway Hill beneath the hill fort known as Oliver's Castle - to the west of the location of today's horse. This original horse was locally known as the "Snobs Horse", with the word "snobs" apparently being a local word for a shoemaker. It seems that the Snobs Horse only survived until around 1922, when it was eventually lost due to a lack of regular maintenance and slowly encroaching turf.

The ghost of the Snobs Horse can still occasionally be seen however, when the weather conditions are just right. The Snobs Horse was made using a technique called "trenching", where a trench is dug and filled with chalk to create the white horse. This approach is used when the local chalk is not sufficiently near the surface to enable the horse to be created by just peeling back the overlying turf. This trenching means that the chalk that formed the white horse is at a different level to the surrounding chalk, this enables parts of the long overgrown old white horse to be seen from time to time when the weather is just right. From these sightings it has been determined that the original Snobs Horse was about half of the size of the present day white horse.

So if you ever visit Devizes and see the current white horse, be sure to make the effort to go a little further west to Oliver's Castle and try to see if you can see any trace of the Snobs Horse. If you do I would love to see your pictures!

The Devizes Millennium White Horse in the distance.

Looking a bit grubby!

Pictures: Wiltshire (August 2015).

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The Hill Figures at Westbury and Cherhill

Back in September 2013 I used the power of Google Maps to conduct an “Armchair Tour” of Britain’s white horses. Since that post I have been able to visit both the Westbury White Horse and the Cherhill White Horse, so I can now share some pictures of them in the flesh.

The Westbury White Horse

The Westbury White Horse can be found about 1.6 miles east of the town of Westbury in Wiltshire (south of the B3098), and resides just below an Iron Age hill fort (Bratton Camp) on the edge of Bratton Downs. The Westbury White Horse is believed to be the oldest of the white horses in Wiltshire, and the second oldest in the country.

Legend suggests that the white horse was carved to commemorate King Alfred’s victory at the Battle of Edington in 878. King Alfred was supposedly born in the Vale of White Horses near Uffington. Archaeological evidence suggests that the Uffington White Horse would have been long in existence before King Alfred’s birth, and as such it could have provided inspiration for the Westbury horse. However, there is no firm evidence for the existence of a chalk horse at Westbury before the year 1742, so it is deemed unlikely that this legend is in fact true.

The Westbury White Horse has evolved over time. An engraving from the 1760s depicts a horse at the site, but the horse is smaller than today’s horse and is facing in the opposite direction. Over the years the horse has been slowly remodelled and “improved”, with the original chalk horse slowly morphing into the low maintenance concreted-over horse that can be seen today.

The Westbury White Horse

The view from the white horse

A fire beacon a short distance from the Westbury White Horse. This was installed in honour of the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II in June 2002.

The Cherhill White Horse

The Cherhill White Horse can be found just to the southeast of the village of Cherhill in Wiltshire (to the south of the A4); the horse lies on the side of a hill fort known as Oldbury Castle. The Cherhill White Horse is believed to be the third oldest white horse in Britain, and was cut in 1780 by a man from nearby Calne. Apparently the horse once had a unique feature, a glass eye, which was created by bottles being pressed upside down into the ground. It seems that this glass eye would reflect sunlight enabling the horse's eye to be seen from quite a distance. The eye however, is no longer made of glass, as the bottles slowly disappeared over time. Presumably taken as souvenirs by visitors.

If the Cherill horse looks nice and clean in the below pictures it is because the horse was re-chalked in May 2015, a task that apparently required 14 tonnes of chalk! If you want to see what is involved in maintaining a white horse, take a look at "Maintaining the Broad Town White Horse".

The Cherhill White Horse

Near the Cherhill White Horse is an obelisk called the Lansdowne Monument. This is a 38m stone structure that was erected in 1845 by the 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne in memorial to his ancestor Sir William Petty.

Pictures: Wiltshire (May 2015).

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Maintaining the Broad Town White Horse

On the sunny weekend of the 14th & 15th of June, Mrs J had the pleasure of helping a team of local volunteers to refurbish the white horse that overlooks the village of Broad Town in Wiltshire.

The Broad Town White Horse (which I have previously mentioned in my “An Armchair Tour of Britain's White Horses”) is situated about half a mile northeast of Broad Town and is believed to date from 1864.

The Broad Town White Horse as seen from Google Maps.

The Broad Town White Horse in 1947.

So armed with a variety of gardening implements the team of volunteers from the village of Broad Town, led by local Archaeologist Bob Clarke, set off to restore the white horse. The first day of activities saw the team spend most of their time weeding the horse and trimming the horse’s outline. It seems that because the field in which the white horse is situated is not grazed by livestock that the outline of the horse is constantly under threat of becoming over grown. This unrelenting march of nature means that twice a year the horse has to be weeded and trimmed to ensure that it retains its shape and its crisp outline, otherwise after a few short years it would be lost from view. 

The Broad Town White Horse on day 1, before its make over.

Zooming it - it's not really white any more.

The horse's head - it is overgrown and the home to weeds.

The rear part of the body and the two back legs - after some weed clearing has occurred.

The body of the horse - almost clear of weeds.

The arch of the horse's back restored to a nice sharp line with the tail, yet to be weeded at the back. 

The restoration team at the start of day 1 (excluding Team Leader Bob Clarke, who is behind the camera).

Day two saw the team complete the weeding and edging activities. Once the team had finished removing all the weeds from the horse’s body and had restored its eye, body and limbs to their nature shape and size, attention turned to restoring the horse back to its natural white colour.

Originally when the white horse was cut into the hillside chalk it would have appeared a brilliant white, however over time the colour tends to yellow and on an annual basis the volunteers have to re-lime the horse to ensure it retains its former glory. Coating the Broad Town White Horse in lime required the use of over 1 tonne of powdered lime, which the team raked out over the horse’s body and limbs to give the horse a restored brilliant white appearance. As it was explained to me, once the first rains hit this powdered lime, it turns from a fine powder into a hard crust and gives the horse another year of life.

The Broad Town White Horse only seems to survive due to the dedication of the local villagers who commit a few days each year to its upkeep. The villagers also have to fund the work themselves, raising money during community events. Interestingly, the Broad Town White Horse is not a scheduled ancient monument and if it did become so it sounds like it would prevent the villagers from taking care of it in such a cost efficient and proactive manner.

Bags of powdered lime starting to be laid out.

All the bags laid out.

The leader of the restoration (Bob Clarke) opens the first bag of lime on the horses head.

The new white lime in comparison to the old (non-white) surface.

The restoration team at the end of day 2 (excluding Mrs J, who is behind the camera).
It should be noted that I only turned up to take a few photos late on day 2 - I did not really get involved in the hard work!

The restored horse seen from the track just below the hill.

Zooming in.

The restored Broad Town White Horse seen from the village school. 

Zooming in.

The information board that lives just below the horse.

On my way home from the Broad Town White Horse I also happened to pass another local white horse, The Broad Hinton White Horse. The Board Hinton White Horse (also known as the Hackpen White Horse) lies about two miles southeast of the village of Broad Hinton (on the side of the B4041). Details of the origin of this white horse are not certain, but some believe it was cut into the hillside in the mid 1800’s (possibly in 1838 to commemorate the coronation of Queen Victoria). It also seems that the local area used to be home to a third white horse at Rockley (between Hackpen and Marlborough), which was rediscovered in 1948 on land at Wick Down Farm on Rockley Down, but subsequently lost again to the farmers crops and plough. From the design of the horse it has been proposed that it dates from the early 19th Century, which neatly aligns with the dates of the creation of the Broad Town and Hackpen horses - clearly creating white horses in Wiltshire in the 19th Century was the fashionable thing to do!

The Hackpen White Horse.

The Hackpen White Horse.

The Hackpen (Broad Hinton) White Horse as seen from Google Maps.

The Rockley Down White Horse, reproduced from: The Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine,  Volume 59, 1964. 

Pictures, Wiltshire (June 2014).

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The Wonders of Uffington

In this blog I have previously mentioned the Oxfordshire village of Uffington as the home of the Uffington White Horse, which is thought to be the oldest white horse in Britain. It was not until I recently visited Uffington however that I became aware of some of the other wonders that the local landscape has to offer.

The white horse lives next to Uffington Castle. Uffington Castle is an Iron Age bank and ditch style hill fort which encloses around 8 acres of land and commands extensive views over the local countryside, as can be seen in the below photos.

Uffington Castle's earthworks. 

Uffington Castle's earthworks and extensive views. 

Information board.

Directly below the white horse is a small chalk hillock that has a seemingly artificial flat top. This hillock is known as Dragon Hill. This hill is linked to the legend of King George and the dragon. The legend claims that the summit of the hill is where Saint George slew the dragon, and that the bare patch of chalk that can be seen is where the dragon’s blood spilled (and hence no grass will now grow there).

It has also been suggested that Dragon Hill may have been used for Iron Age rituals that were associated with the white horse.

Looking from above the horses' head down towards Dragon Hill.

Dragon Hill. 

Looking back up towards the white horse from Dragon Hill.

The other local feature, that is about a mile walk along the Ridgeway from Uffington Castle, is the Neolithic long barrow which is known as Wayland’s Smithy.

This tomb dates from around 3700 BC and is about 56m long by 13m wide. When the tomb was excavated in the 1960’s it was found to contain the remains of 14 people, who seem to have been de-fleshed before burial.

The name of the tomb derives from its association by the Saxons with the Germanic god Wayland (also known as Wolund) who was a smith. The Saxons began to live in the area around 4000 years after the tomb was built and the Saxon association of the tomb with Wayland the Smith gave rise to an interesting legend. Apparently if a traveller had a horse that had lost a shoe, leaving the horse and a silver coin (as payment) at the tomb overnight would result in the horse being re-shod by morning.

Information board.

Side view of the long barrow.

Front view of the long barrow.

The entrance.

Looking from the back to the front of the long barrow.

Even though the long barrow of Wayland’s Smithy is around 5700 years old it seems that practice of using long barrows as tombs has not died out entirely. The village of All Cannings, near Devizes in Wiltshire, will soon be home to a new long barrow which is currently under construction. Once completed, paying customers will be able to book their place in eternity in the long barrow - a method of burial that was once reserved only for the social elite of ancient Britain (December 2013 news article, January 2014 news article).

Pictures, Oxfordshire (December 2013).

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