-
Question
-
What is the history of Westbury White Horse as it is featured regularly in books and calendars alongside Avebury and Stonehenge, and does any other White Horse have an eye you can sit on?
-
Question asked on
-
27 November 2003
-
Answer
-
The earlier Westbury horse was about 100 feet high and 100 feet long and faced in the opposite direction to the present one. It was destroyed in 1778 when Mr Gee, steward to Lord Abingdon, the local landowner, did not like its strange shape and cut a larger and more conventional horse. This measured 163 feet high by 166 feet long. This horse was restored in 1853 and again in 1873 when edging stones were put in place to help prevent erosion. In 1903 and 1936 concrete was added to the edging stones and the horse was completely concreted over in the 1950s.
Most of the Wiltshire white horses originally had an eye and the one at Cherhill had one made of glass bottles, inserted into the ground so that the sunlight reflected off the bases. These were stolen long ago but were replaced in 1971. I believe that the others that still have eyes are those at Alton Barnes, Marlborough, Pewsey and the Millennium White Horse at Devizes.
-
Bibliography
-
White Horses and Other Hill Figures, by Morris Marples (1949). Reprinted by S.R. Publishers, 1970, 0 85409 616 7
Discovering Hill Figures, by Kate Bergamar. Shire Publications,1997, 0 7478 0345 5
Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, 2001
