White Horse

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Any of 17 hill figures in England, found particularly in the southern chalk downlands. The Uffington White Horse below Uffington Castle, a hill fort on the Berkshire Downs, is 110 m/360 ft long and probably a tribal totem of the late Bronze Age.

The Westbury Horse on Bratton Hill, Wiltshire, was made in 1778 on the site of an older horse, said to commemorate Alfred the Great's victory over the Danes at Ethandun in AD 878.

Uffington White Horse
The Uffington Horse has inspired many imitations, many of which date from the 18th and early 19th centuries. It has been known historically since at least AD 1084, when it was noted as a landmark in a charter of the Abbey of Abingdon, and by the 14th century it had given its name to the Vale of the White Horse. Theories regarding its origins have suggested that it was cut by Alfred the Great to celebrate his victory over the Danes at Ashdown in AD 871; that it was a memorial of the conversion of the Saxons to Christianity; and that it was made for some unknown purpose by the Druids or the Romans.

There is a stylistic similarity between the Uffington Horse and the horse represented on the gold and silver coins current in southeastern England at the end of the early Iron Age. Similar horses appear on two artefacts of the same period, the Aylesford and Marlborough buckets. The nearby hill fort of Uffington Castle is also from the early Iron Age. According to recent excavation, the site has been used extensively since the Bronze Age, although the White Horse may not be contemporaneous with this, but a later modification to the landscape. Current opinion is that the Uffington Horse was a totem or cult object of the Belgae, a people who occupied much of southeastern England between 50 BC and AD 50.

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