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Chalk Drawings
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Chalk Drawings
Location: Oxfordshire
“Before the gods that made the gods
Had seen their sunrise pass
The White Horse of the White Horse Vale
Was cut out of the grass.“
So said GK Chesterton about the White Horse of Uffington, the most famous of all chalk carvings.
Although he may have somewhat overestimated its age, the 365ft long galloping, big-eyed horse has been scientifically verified by Oxford University’s archaeological research unit as approximately 3,000 years old.
As Bronze Age art goes, it’s pretty impressive. The simple, flowing designs have been the inspiration for many a modern logo. Not to mention that to cut and remove the turf and then back-fill the excavation with chalk must have been a daunting task with the tools on offer a millennium before Christ was born.
Then there’s the maintenance. The White Horse Project has been investigating how the villagers of Uffington, Berkshire, have cared for the horse these past 3,000 years. It is estimated that chalk carvings need ‘scouring’ – removing all growth from the surface and redefining the outline – every seven years. That’s a lot of care and attention.
There are 53 of these peculiarly British pieces of art cut into the chalk downlands of southern England alone, with at least 44 more lost to the encroaching grass. But how many are ancient and how many modern copies?
 There’s little doubt that the Uffington horse is as worthy (not to mention as mysterious) a part of our heritage as Stone Henge, but in contrast to their passion for stone circles it seems that our ancient ancestors may have been content with just the one chalk carving.
Not one of the other carvings has been conclusively dated to within 2,000 years of Uffington. Of greatest controversy is the famously priapic Cerne Abbas Giant. At 180ft metres high and with 25ft of manhood, however prudish, one can hardly ignore the ‘rude man’. Until recently, archaeologists believed him to be either an ancient fertility symbol cut about 1,000 BC, or a depiction of Hercules created in Roman Britain. In the mid-90s, however, historians in Bristol argued they had proof that he was nothing more than a
satirical representation of Oliver Cromwell.
 Even the Long Man of Wilmington in East Sussex, at 235ft high thought to be Europe’s largest representation of the human form, has had its prehistoric credentials questioned, and the famous Westbury Horse in Wiltshire probably only dates back to the late 17th century, although some say it was carved over an earlier 9th century horse.
What remains unquestionable though is that the greatest flurry of chalk carving was between the mid-18th and 19th centuries and took place across the Wiltshire Downs. They were cut for a variety of reasons – to celebrate coronations, as memorials, because the local landowner fancied leaving a mark, or just a joke.
 The cutting didn’t stop there – it has continued to the present day. The Bleriot carving celebrates the first flight across the channel, the Wye Crown commemorates the succession of Edward VII, the Shoreham Cross is a memorial to those lost in the First World War, British and Australian soldiers carved their brigade badges into Salisbury Plain, and the huge Whipsnade Lion celebrates nothing more legendary or mythical than a zoo. The latest is the Brighton Hawk, completed in 2001, and construction of the Folkestone White Horse is still under way.
Not much art from the Bronze Age has survived. We no longer paint hunt scenes on cave walls nor erect stone circles, but what we have continued to do for the last 3,000 years is cut huge images into our landscape. The British eccentric? Not us.
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