At close quarters, the Uffington White Horse could be any other path scratched into the Oxfordshire hillside. Those bright chalk lines, pressed into the earth by human hands, are designed to be seen from far away. Across the Vale, it is much easier to make out the strange beaked horse over 100 metres long, galloping over the hill.
This is one of a handful of chalk figures scattered across the British landscape, and it has been so well cared for in its 3,000-year lifespan that it had to be covered in turf during the Second World War so Luftwaffe pilots couldn’t use it for navigation.
Why a community of Bronze Age Britons went to the trouble of making it is still unclear, but of all the animals to appear in prehistoric imagery, the horse is one of the most common. Our ancient ancestors obviously venerated horses. Later, the Anglo-Saxons used at least 16 Old English words for horses, each distinguishing between those used for carts,
