A few weekends ago, we had the pleasure of going to Uffington with a couple of visiting friends. I’ve wanted to go to Uffington for years, it is a famous prehistoric site with two famous features: The Uffington White Horse and Wayland’s Smithy.
The Uffington White Horse is a ancient chalk drawing on the side of a hill. It’s dating shows that it is at least 3000 years old. There is some debate about whether it is actually a horse being shown, but it has been called a “horse” since the 11th century. I was very much struck by how difficult it was to make out the figure from any angle that we viewed it. We had seen it from several miles away and it wasn’t completely clear, nor was it clear from the road below,
or from standing next to it on a hill.
Here is a pic from Wikipedia to show what the horse looks like from the sky:
Now, why a 3000 year old landscape drawing would look best from the sky is really beyond me. It reminded me of reading books like “Chariots of the Gods” when I was a child, and learning about the figures on the Nazca Lines in Peru which could only be clearly seen from above. Perhaps there was a better vantage point that we missed?
Nearby to the Uffington White Horse is “Wayland’s Smithy”, a neo-lithic longbarrow burial chamber that is over 5000 years old! The Saxons named the site after Wayland, their blacksmith god. It is a beautiful, quite site surrounded by trees.
Afterwards, we went to a lovely old nearby pub, sat in the garden, and enjoyed a nice pint.
