Cherhill White Horse

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Cherhill White Horse

The Cherhill White Horse is a scratch pattern on the Cherhill in Wiltshire , England . It dates from the late 18th century and is the third oldest such figure in Britain. The figure is also called the Oldbury White Horse .

location

It is on a steep slope towards the north-east below the remains of Oldbury Castle .

Near the horse is an obelisk called the Lansdowne Monument . This is a 38-meter stone structure that was erected in 1845 by Henry Petty-FitzMaurice, 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne, to commemorate his ancestor Sir William Petty .

inspiration

The Cherhill horse is believed to have been inspired by the first such horse, located near Westbury in Wiltshire, which has just been restored. The origins of the Westbury White Horse are somewhat of a mystery. Unlike the Uffington White Horse in Berkshire , which can be proven to date from the Bronze Age, the earliest evidence of the Westbury White Horse is found in a writing by Francis Wise (1742). The first Wiltshire horse is thought to commemorate the victory of Alfred the Great over Guthrum and the Danes at the Battle of Ethandun in 878. Another theory suggests that it was only used in the early 18th century as a sign of loyalty to the new royal house, House of Hanover , was created because the white horse is the heraldic symbol of the House of Hanover.

history

The Cherhill figure was originally created by Dr. Christopher Alsop from Calne scratched by removing the peat layer to reveal the chalk layer. The original size was 50 meters by 67 meters. Dr. Alsop was Guild Steward of the Borough of Calne and was called the mad doctor (German: the crazy doctor ). It is reported that he directed the creation of the horse from a distance, giving the instructions with a megaphone.

Since 1780 the horse has been revised several times. In 1935 it was given a mixture of chalk and cement and cleaned in 1994. A major restoration took place in 2002. It was provided with 160 tons of new chalk and a casing should ensure the stability of the chalk.

In the 19th century, the horse had a glass eye, formed from bottles that had been inserted bottom up into the earth. The bottles came from the farmer Angell and his wife, but they were probably stolen as souvenirs at the end of the 19th century. In the 1970s the horse got one more eye made of glass, but it was lost. The eye is now made of stones and cement and protrudes from the surface of the chalk.

literature

  • Plenderleath, Rev. WC, On the White Horses of Wiltshire and Its Neighborhood ( Wilts Archaeological Magazine , vol. 14 for the year 1872, pp. 12-30)
  • Plenderleath, Rev. WC, White Horses of the West of England (London: Alfred Russell Smith, & Calne: Alfred Heath, 1885; 2nd edition, London, Allen & Storr, 1892)
  • Marples, Morris, White Horses & Other Hill Figures (London: Country Life Ltd, 1949; New York, Charles Scribner's Sons , 1949)
  • Bergamar, Kate, Discovering Hill Figures (London: Shire Publications, 1968, 4th revised edition 1997, ISBN 0-7478-0345-5 )

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Marples, Morris, White Horses & Other Hill Figures (London: Country Life Ltd, 1949; New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1949)
  2. ↑ The Lansdowne Monument near to Cherhill, Wiltshire, Great Britain at geograph.org.uk, accessed July 18, 2008
  3. ^ Wise, Francis, Further Observations on the White Horse and other Antiquities in Berkshire (1742)
  4. ↑ Home page: An introduction to the white horses at wiltshirewhitehorses.org.uk, accessed July 18, 2008

Web links

Commons : Cherhill White Horse  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 51 ° 25 '30.9 "  N , 1 ° 55' 47.7"  W.