Cherhill White Horse
Encyclopedia
Hill figure
A hill figure is a large visual representation created by cutting into a steep hillside and revealing the underlying geology. It is a type of geoglyph usually designed to be seen from afar rather than above. In some cases trenches are dug and rubble made from material brighter than the natural...
on Cherhill
Cherhill
Cherhill is a village in Wiltshire, England located on the A4 road between Calne and Marlborough and about west of London.- Overview :Cherhill is known for the Cherhill White Horse cut into the chalk hillside in 1780, the Landsdowne obelisk on the Cherhill Downs, and the crop circles that appeared...
Down
Downland
A downland is an area of open chalk hills. This term is especially used to describe the chalk countryside in southern England. Areas of downland are often referred to as Downs....
, 3.5 miles east of Calne
Calne
Calne is a town in Wiltshire, southwestern England. It is situated at the northwestern extremity of the North Wessex Downs hill range, a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty....
in Wiltshire
Wiltshire
Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...
, England. Dating from the late 18th century, it is the third oldest of several such white horses
Leucippotomy
Leucippotomy is the art of carving white horses in chalk upland areas, particularly as practised in southern England. The practice is apparently of prehistoric origin; the Uffington White Horse, near The Ridgeway, has been dated to between 1400 and 600 BC. The Uffington White Horse is the most...
in Great Britain, with only the Uffington White Horse
Uffington White Horse
The Uffington White Horse is a highly stylised prehistoric hill figure, 110 m long , formed from deep trenches filled with crushed white chalk...
and the Westbury White Horse
Westbury White Horse
The Westbury or Bratton White Horse is a hill figure on the escarpment of Salisbury Plain, approximately east of Westbury in England. Located on the edge of Bratton Downs and lying just below an Iron Age hill fort, it is the oldest of several white horses carved in Wiltshire...
being older. The figure is also sometimes called the Oldbury White Horse.
'Cherhill' is pronounced as if spelt Cherrill.
Location
Facing towards the north-east, the Cherhill White Horse lies on a steep slope of Cherhill down, a little below the earthworkEarthworks (engineering)
Earthworks are engineering works created through the moving or processing of quantities of soil or unformed rock.- Civil engineering use :Typical earthworks include roads, railway beds, causeways, dams, levees, canals, and berms...
known as Oldbury Castle, and can be seen from the A4 road and the nearby village of Cherhill
Cherhill
Cherhill is a village in Wiltshire, England located on the A4 road between Calne and Marlborough and about west of London.- Overview :Cherhill is known for the Cherhill White Horse cut into the chalk hillside in 1780, the Landsdowne obelisk on the Cherhill Downs, and the crop circles that appeared...
. A good viewpoint is a lay-by alongside the westbound carriageway of the A4 where it passes below the horse. From near here, a footpath climbs the hill towards the horse.
Near the horse is an obelisk
Obelisk
An obelisk is a tall, four-sided, narrow tapering monument which ends in a pyramid-like shape at the top, and is said to resemble a petrified ray of the sun-disk. A pair of obelisks usually stood in front of a pylon...
called the Lansdowne Monument
Lansdowne Monument
The Lansdowne Monument, also known as Cherhill Monument, near Cherhill in Wiltshire is a 38 metre stone obelisk erected by Third Marquis of Lansdowne to the designs of Sir Charles Barry to commemorate his ancestor, Sir William Petty in 1845....
, visible in some photographs of the White Horse. This is a 38-metre stone structure, erected in 1845 by the 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne
Henry Petty-FitzMaurice, 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne
Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne KG, PC, FRS , known as Lord Henry Petty from 1784 to 1809 and then as The Earl of Kerry to 1818, was a British statesman...
to commemorate his ancestor Sir William Petty
William Petty
Sir William Petty FRS was an English economist, scientist and philosopher. He first became prominent serving Oliver Cromwell and Commonwealth in Ireland. He developed efficient methods to survey the land that was to be confiscated and given to Cromwell's soldiers...
.
Inspiration
The Cherhill horse may have been inspired by the first such Wiltshire horse, that at Westbury, which had just been remodelled. The origins of the Westbury horse are more obscure. Unlike the Uffington White Horse in OxfordshireOxfordshire
Oxfordshire is a county in the South East region of England, bordering on Warwickshire and Northamptonshire , Buckinghamshire , Berkshire , Wiltshire and Gloucestershire ....
(historically Berkshire
Berkshire
Berkshire is a historic county in the South of England. It is also often referred to as the Royal County of Berkshire because of the presence of the royal residence of Windsor Castle in the county; this usage, which dates to the 19th century at least, was recognised by the Queen in 1957, and...
), which has been shown to date from the Bronze Age
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age...
, the earliest evidence of the existence of the Westbury horse is in a paper published by the Rev. Francis Wise in 1742. A bold theory for the origin of the first Wiltshire horse is that it commemorates Alfred the Great
Alfred the Great
Alfred the Great was King of Wessex from 871 to 899.Alfred is noted for his defence of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of southern England against the Vikings, becoming the only English monarch still to be accorded the epithet "the Great". Alfred was the first King of the West Saxons to style himself...
's victory over Guthrum
Guthrum
The name Guthrum corresponds to Norwegian Guttom and to Danish Gorm.The name Guthrum may refer to these kings:* Guthrum, who fought against Alfred the Great* Gorm the Old of Denmark and Norway* Guthrum II, a king of doubtful historicity...
and the Danes at the Battle of Ethandun, in 878. Another is that it was carved in the early 18th century as a show of loyalty to the new royal house, the House of Hanover
House of Hanover
The House of Hanover is a deposed German royal dynasty which has ruled the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg , the Kingdom of Hanover, the Kingdom of Great Britain, the Kingdom of Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland...
, the white horse being a heraldic symbol of the Electorate of Hanover
Electorate of Hanover
The Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg was the ninth Electorate of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation...
. One writer on the subject has commented "...the hillside white horse can be a slippery creature, and the origins of some are impossible to establish with any certainty."
History
Calne
Calne is a town in Wiltshire, southwestern England. It is situated at the northwestern extremity of the North Wessex Downs hill range, a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty....
, and was created by stripping away the turf to expose the chalk
Chalk
Chalk is a soft, white, porous sedimentary rock, a form of limestone composed of the mineral calcite. Calcite is calcium carbonate or CaCO3. It forms under reasonably deep marine conditions from the gradual accumulation of minute calcite plates shed from micro-organisms called coccolithophores....
hillside beneath. Its original size was 165 feet (50.3 m) by 220 feet (67.1 m). Dr Alsop, who was Guild Steward of the Borough of Calne, has been called "the mad doctor", and is reported to have directed the making of the horse from a distance, shouting through a megaphone
Megaphone
A megaphone, speaking-trumpet, bullhorn, blowhorn, or loud hailer is a portable, usually hand-held, cone-shaped horn used to amplify a person’s voice or other sounds towards a targeted direction. This is accomplished by channelling the sound through the megaphone, which also serves to match the...
from below Labour-in-Vain Hill. His design may have been influenced by the work of his friend George Stubbs
George Stubbs
George Stubbs was an English painter, best known for his paintings of horses.-Biography:Stubbs was born in Liverpool, the son of a currier and leather merchant. Information on his life up to age thirty-five is sparse, relying almost entirely on notes made by fellow artist Ozias Humphry towards the...
, notable for his paintings of horses.
Since 1780, the horse has been 'scoured' several times. In 1935, it was dressed with a mixture of concrete and chalk, and it was cleaned up in 1994. A major restoration was carried out in 2002 by the Cherhill White Horse Restoration Group, when the horse was resurfaced with one hundred and sixty tonne
Tonne
The tonne, known as the metric ton in the US , often put pleonastically as "metric tonne" to avoid confusion with ton, is a metric system unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. The tonne is not an International System of Units unit, but is accepted for use with the SI...
s of new chalk, the outline was re-cut, and shuttering was added to hold the chalk in place. This work was supported by a grant of £
Pound sterling
The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...
18,000 from the National Trust
National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty
The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, usually known as the National Trust, is a conservation organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland...
. The present surface is thus made of compacted chalk, and the edges of the figure are well defined.
In the 19th century, the horse had a glittering glass eye, formed from bottles pressed neck-first into the ground. The bottles had been added by a Farmer Angell and his wife, but by the late 19th century they were gone, perhaps taken as souvenirs. During the 1970s, a local youth centre project added a new eye made of glass bottles, but these also disappeared. The eye now consists of stone and concrete and stands proud of the chalk surface.
In 1922, M. Oldfield Howey noted that "At the time of writing (1922) this horse is sadly in need of scouring, as due to the Great War
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
all such things have had to be neglected, but we understand that a local lady has come to its rescue and asked permission to restore it. Formerly the Lord of the Manor
Lord of the Manor
The Lordship of a Manor is recognised today in England and Wales as a form of property and one of three elements of a manor that may exist separately or be combined and may be held in moieties...
was its groom!"
In the week of the coronation
Coronation of the British monarch
The coronation of the British monarch is a ceremony in which the monarch of the United Kingdom is formally crowned and invested with regalia...
of King George VI
George VI of the United Kingdom
George VI was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth from 11 December 1936 until his death...
in 1937, the horse was floodlit and the letters GE (for the king and his queen, Elizabeth
Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon
Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon was the queen consort of King George VI from 1936 until her husband's death in 1952, after which she was known as Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, to avoid confusion with her daughter, Queen Elizabeth II...
) were picked out in red lights above it, with the power coming from a generator at the foot of the hill. The red letters were lit up for five seconds, followed by the floodlights for ten seconds, in a repeating pattern.
The figure was featured in The Timelords
The KLF
The KLF were one of the seminal bands of the British acid house movement during the late 1980s and early 1990s....
music video for "Doctorin' the Tardis".
Thirteen such white horses are known to have existed in Wiltshire. Of these, eight can still be seen, while the others have grown over. The Cherhill White Horse is maintained and saved from this fate by Cherhill parish council. Perhaps most notable out of the eight, along with the Cherill white horse, is Westbury White Horse.
The hill above the horse now belongs to the National Trust
National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty
The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, usually known as the National Trust, is a conservation organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland...
.
Another nearby white horse at Alton Barnes is based on the Cherhill White Horse.
External pictures
- Panorama of Cherhill White Horse and Landsdowne Monument at flickr.com
- Cherhill White Horse at bbc.co.uk
- Postcard of the Cherhill White Horse, c. 1910 at hows.org.uk
- Cherhill White Horse, close up at flickr.com
- Cherhill White Horse, very close up at hows.org.uk
External links
- Cherhill White Horse location map from maps.yahoo.com
- Interactive map of Oldbury Castle and Cherhill White Horse, Wiltshire, from pagemost.com
- Wiltshire White Horses at wiltshirewhitehorses.org.uk
- Horse history at wiltshire-web.co.uk (the Wiltshire Web)