The Kileva White Horse Challenge 2014

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THE KILEVA WHITE HORSE CHALLENGE 2014

In aid of Kileva Foundation

Joe Parkhurst & Cliff Evans

The Kileva White Horse Challenge 2014

Contents

1. The Alton Barnes white horse ...... 3 2. The Broad Town white horse ...... 5 3. The Cherhill or Oldbury white horse ...... 7 4. The new Devizes white horse ...... 9 5. The Hackpen or Broad Hinton or Winterbourne Bassett white horse ...... 11 6. The Marlborough or Preshute white horse ...... 13 7. The new Pewsey white horse ...... 15 8. The Westbury or Bratton white horse ...... 16 9. Challenge Calendar ...... 18

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1. The Alton Barnes white horse

Ordnance Survey grid reference: SU 106 637

This horse is a little under a mile north of the village of Alton Barnes, on a moderate slope on Milk Hill on the ridge that extends to Walker's Hill, to the west of the Alton Barnes to Lockeridge road.

The originator was a Mr Robert Pile, of Manor Farm, Alton Barnes. He may have been the same man who was responsible for the first Pewsey horse, or possibly his son. In 1812 Mr Pile paid twenty pounds to a journeyman painter, John Thorne, also known as Jack the Painter, to design the white horse and have the work of cutting it carried out. Thorne designed the horse, then sub-contracted the excavation work to a John Harvey of Stanton St Bernard. Before the work was finished Thorne took off with the money, and Mr Pile was left to pay out again. Thorne was eventually hanged, but what crime that was for seems not to be recorded.

Curiously, a John Thorne, known as Jack the Painter, was hanged in the dockyard at Portsmouth, Hampshire in 1776 for arson carried out there. Was this just coincidence? Was the Alton Barnes designer the son or other relative of the first, and took up the same trade and acquired the same nickname? Or is there some mistake over the dates? If anyone has any information about this I'd be pleased to receive it.

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The horse seems to have been well looked after over the years, with fairly regular scouring. On one occasion, however, in 1866, the scourers dug a new chalk pit just above the horse, which created a white patch that spoiled the appearance for some time. In 2010 the horse underwent a major renovation overseen by landowner Tim Carson and Alton Barnes Parish Council, when 150 tons of fresh chalk were delivered to the site by helicopter, which volunteers then used to replenish the surface of the figure.

The Alton Barnes white horse looks out over Pewsey Vale towards the new Pewsey horse, and can be seen for many miles. Perhaps the best views, though, are from Alton Barnes itself, and from the road from Alton Barnes to Lockeridge. The horse can be reached by footpaths from the Lockeridge road.

There is a tradition of lighting the white horses to mark special occasions, and in recent times this horse was lit by candlelight at the winter solstices in 2001 and 2002, and then every year from 2004 to 2011. It was also lit on 30th June 2012, marking its 200th anniversary. You can find more information on this page.

This horse will be lit again for the 2012 Winter Solstice - details can be found here.

Curiously, in the nearby village of Alton Priors, there is a sarsen stone by the roadside which has a miniature replica of the Alton Barnes white horse carved on it.

Milk Hill and nearby Tan Hill are the joint highest points in Wiltshire at 294 metres. There was also a white horse on Tan Hill, though this is no longer visible.

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2. The Broad Town white horse

Ordnance Survey grid reference: SU 098 783

Broad Town is three miles south of Wootton Bassett on the Marlborough road, and the white horse is in a depression on a steep slope half a mile north east of the village.

It is on land which once belonged to Little Town Farm. According to Rev. Plenderleath, writing in 1885, it was cut in 1864 by a William Simmonds, who held the farm then. Simmonds claimed later that it had been his intention to enlarge the horse gradually over the years, but he had to give up the farm and so did not have the opportunity. It is difficult to imagine exactly what he had in mind; take a drawing of a horse and expand it by enlarging the outline, and the more one enlarges it the less the result resembles the original.

There is another version of the origin of the Broad Town white horse, however. The Curator of the Imperial War Museum, in a newspaper interview in 1919, said that as a schoolboy in 1863 he had helped scour the horse, and that he had been told at that time that it was at least fifty years old then. If that is true, then William Simmonds may have scoured the horse in 1864, rather than cut it as he claimed.

The horse suffered from neglect through much of its history, but in 1991 the Broad Town White Horse Restoration Society was formed, and they restored the horse and continue to regularly scour it. On my last visit in May 2004 the horse was in good condition.

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Visible for many miles, the horse can be seen well from the village of Broad Town. The site can be reached by footpaths from the village, and from the road where it climbs Broad Town Hill just to the south of the village, though there are no parking places on Broad Town Hill. The steps below the horse are dangerous, and should not be used.

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3. The Cherhill or Oldbury white horse

Ordnance Survey grid reference: SU 049 696

The Cherhill white horse is the second oldest of the Wiltshire horses. It is situated on the edge of Cherhill Down, off the A4 Calne to Marlborough road just east of the village of Cherhill, and is just below the earthwork known as Oldbury Castle. Nearby is the obelisk known as the Lansdowne Monument. Very well placed high on a steep slope, the horse is easily visible from below and from a distance.

It may well have been inspired by the Westbury horse, as it was cut in 1780, just two years after that first Wiltshire horse was recut to a new design. The Cherhill white horse is the work of a Dr Christopher Alsop of Calne, sometimes referred to as "the mad doctor". He is said to have directed the marking out of the horse from a distance, calling instructions through a megaphone. Dr Alsop's design for the horse may have been influenced by the work of his artist friend George Stubbs, famous for his paintings of horses and other animals.

This white horse once had an unusual feature, a glass eye. The centre of the eye was formed from upturned bottles pressed into the ground to reflect the sunlight. Thus the eye apparently had a bright gleaming appearance, and was visible from a considerable distance. The bottles were supplied by a Farmer Angell and his wife. By the late nineteenth century, though, they no longer remained, perhaps taken as souvenirs. New bottles were set in position on at least one occasion. In the early nineteen seventies children on a youth centre project put new bottles in place, with their names inside them. Ultimately, however, they suffered the same fate as the originals. The present eye is of stone and concrete.

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Mr John Shortland tells me that as a child in the nineteen fifties, he and his cousins used to use the body of the horse as a slide. They would hurtle down the steep chalk slope on trays or in sacks!

The horse seems to have been well-maintained throughout its history, but in recent years had become rather dilapidated. A major restoration was carried out during August 2002, involving re-cutting the outline of the horse, fixing shuttering to hold the chalk in place, and resurfacing the horse with 160 tonnes of fresh chalk. The work was paid for by funds raised by the Cherhill White Horse Restoration Group. An "opening ceremony" took place on Sunday 8th September, attended by well over a hundred people.

The horse can be seen well from the A4, and there are footpaths from that road up onto Cherhill Down.

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4. The new Devizes white horse

Ordnance Survey grid reference: SU 016 641

This is the newest of the Wiltshire white horses. Designed by Peter Greed, it was cut by around two hundred local people in 1999 to mark the millennium. It is on Roundway Hill to the north of Devizes, overlooking the village of Roundway. This horse is the only one in Wiltshire, and one of only four in Britain, to face to the right.

In 1954, pupils at Devizes Grammar school researched the old Devizes horse, and one of them, Peter Greed, drew up plans for re-creating it. Nothing came of that at the time, but years later, in 1998, Sarah Padwick, who had recently moved to Devizes and was unaware of the old horse, wrote to a local paper suggesting that a Devizes hill figure should be cut on Roundway Down to celebrate the millennium.

Chris Combe, a local tenant farmer, offered land on Roundway Hill for the project, and the owners, the Crown Estates Commissioners, gave their approval for the land to be used. It was decided that a reversal of the design drawn up in 1954 for re-creating the old Devizes horse should be used, and thus the new horse faces right. Work began on the site in August 1999, ultimately involving some two hundred local people with the assistance of heavy machinery supplied by Pearce Civil Engineering. By the end of September Devizes had a new white horse.

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The horse can be seen well, though somewhat foreshortened, from Hopton Industrial Estate and from near Roundway village. To visit the site of the horse, take the A361 out of Devizes towards Swindon. Just before the first big roundabout, take the left turn signposted Roundway and Garden Industrial Estate, then follow the narrow lane to Roundway village. In the village, take the right fork by the phone box. Beyond the village take the right fork on the hill. At the top of the hill, there is a stile on the right which gives access to the site. A few yards further on there is a parking area on the left.

By early September 2008 the horse had become barely visible. The Devizes Millennium White Horse Committee were seeking funding to restore it, but the Probation Service - Community Service Group then took on the project of thoroughly cleaning the horse. They have been carrying out this work regularly, which means that the horse maintains a good, clean appearance.

With the dissolution of Kennet District Council, the Committee were given a grant to cover installing a mobility gate into the field and edging around the horse, so that the outline is not lost over the years.

On 10th October 2009, 250 people went up to the White Horse Field to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the construction of the White Horse, an event attended by the Mayor of Devizes, the late John Leighton. People formed a figure '10' on the surface of the Horse, whilst a light aircraft from GS Aviation flew over taking aerial photographs of the event. It was a glorious, sunny day and there was a real party atmosphere throughout.

Nursteed Primary School in Devizes has the Devizes white horse as its logo, and the school now has a scaled-down white horse of its own. The horse, a one-tenth scale replica of the original, measuring around 10 metres by 8, was cut in the school grounds by volunteers from staff, parents and children. It was unveiled by the Mayor of Devizes Kelvin Nash on 10th October 2012 to celebrate the school's tenth birthday.

There is a tradition of lighting the white horses to mark special occasions, and the Devizes horse and the Alton Barnes horse were lit up on the evening of 30th June 2012. You can find more information on this page.

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5. The Hackpen or Broad Hinton or Winterbourne Bassett white horse

Ordnance Survey grid reference: SU 128 749

The Hackpen white horse is near The Ridgeway on the edge of the Marlborough Downs, two miles south east of Broad Hinton village, on Hackpen Hill where the Wootton Bassett to Marlborough road zigzags up the hill.

Its origin is uncertain. It may have been cut in 1838 by a Henry Eatwell, Broad Hinton parish clerk, perhaps with the assistance of the landlord of a local pub, to commemorate the coronation of Queen Victoria.

This white horse is on a comparatively shallow slope, but is partly banked up to make it more easily visible. It can be seen from a distance from the high ground near the village of Cliffe Pypard to the west. From nearby it can be seen well from the Wootton Bassett to Marlborough road. There is a car park on Hackpen Hill where that road crosses The Ridgeway, and the horse can be reached easily from it.

The horse has been cleaned quite frequently in recent years. In May or June 2000 John Wain cleaned it single-handedly, a task which took him some five hours. He later flew David Brewer over the area to photograph the village of Broad Hinton and the white horse for David's book "Images of a Wiltshire Downland Village: Broad Hinton and Uffcott". John cleaned the horse every year until 2003 or 2004. On September 23rd 2004 the horse was cleaned, again single-handedly, by Bevan Pope. On February 1st 2011 John Wain cleaned the horse again, this time with the help of a group of friends, and they did the same on February 11

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4th 2012. On both those occasions they lit the newly-cleaned horse when the work was completed. The group plan to make this a yearly project, one which has the full support of the local farmers Jill and James Hussy.

Visitors to the horse should note that there are often three real horses in the field where the chalk horse is situated, and they are liable to become extremely interested in visitors, especially if they think there might be food with them, and will crowd around very attentively. I wouldn't recommend taking dogs or young children into the field if the horses are there.

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6. The Marlborough or Preshute white horse

Ordnance Survey grid reference: SU 184 682

Small but well-maintained, the Marlborough white horse is on a relatively shallow slope on Granham Hill, above the village of Preshute, just southwest of Marlborough. It is just to the west of the A345 Marlborough to Pewsey road.

This white horse was cut in 1804 by pupils of a boys' school run by a Mr Greasley or Gresley. The school was not Marlborough College but Mr Greasley's Academy in the High Street, in what is now The Ivy House Hotel. The horse was designed by a pupil called William Canning, of the Manor House, Ogbourne St George, who also marked it out on the hill. It was scoured every year, and this scouring became a much-loved tradition at the school.

On Mr Greasley's death around 1830, however, the school was closed and the horse was neglected for a time. But by 1860 it was in reasonable condition again; a photograph taken that year of a cricket match shows the horse in the background. In 1873, having been neglected again, it was scoured under the direction of a Captain Reed, a former pupil of Mr Greasley's school, who had taken part in the creation of the horse.

This horse seems to have changed a lot in appearance over the years. In early twentieth century photographs it looks quite solid and naturalistic, but it is now much thinner and more stylized.

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The horse is not easily seen from afar due to the many trees which obstruct distant views of it, but it can be seen from parts of Marlborough. The best view is perhaps from the footpath which runs from Preshute House to the A345, near the tennis courts and running track.

Despite the restoration in 2001 (details below) the horse had grass growing over much of the surface when I last saw it in September 2002. The fence around the horse has been replaced, but the horse itself is in need of attention again.

The following information was kindly supplied by Andrew Eastland of 2nd Marlborough Scouts: This white horse was renovated on Saturday 22nd September 2001. The work was undertaken by the boys and girls of 2nd Marlborough Scout troop with tools and materials supplied by Marlborough College. The renovation included the removal of grass and mosses growing on the figure and the trimming of undergrowth and bushes growing on the hillside below. The figure was then re-chalked to restore it to its original condition. The covering is pure calcium carbonate (chalk) mixed with water and then applied with a stiff brush.

Footnote A new roundabout is to be built in Salisbury Road, Marlborough to provide access to the new White Horse Business Park. There is a plan to create two chalk white horses, one on each side of the roundabout, with chalk spoil from the development.

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7. The new Pewsey white horse

Ordnance Survey grid reference: SU 171 580

The new horse is on Pewsey Hill about a mile south of Pewsey, to the east of the minor road that leads from the A345 on the edge of Pewsey to the village of Everleigh. It is a little above and a little to the left of the site of the old horse.

In 1937, George Marples, an authority on hill carvings, happened to be in the area researching the old white horse at just the time that a committee had been formed to find a suitable way of commemorating the Coronation of George VI. The idea of a new white horse was mooted, and Mr Marples was approached for suggestions. He produced three drawings, and one of these was approved by the committee.

Being only too aware of the difficulty in establishing the dates of origin of some white horses, each of his designs included the year 1937 above the horse. Mr Marples devised a triangulation method for the marking out of the horse, and in late April 1937 it was cut by volunteers from Pewsey Fire Brigade. The horse was cut to Mr Marples' design, with the date above it, but though the horse itself is well-maintained today, the date has disappeared. The maintenance of this horse is done by the Pewsey 6X Club.

I understand that the most recent renovation of this horse took place in spring 2004.

The horse faces left, and is a well-proportioned representation of the real animal. It is on a good slope, and looks out across Pewsey Vale towards the Alton Barnes horse.

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8. The Westbury or Bratton white horse

Ordnance Survey grid reference: ST 898 516

The Westbury white horse is the oldest of the Wiltshire horses. It is also one of the best situated, being high on a very steep slope and overlooking a panoramic view. It is on Westbury Hill, on the edge of the Bratton Downs, immediately below the Iron Age hillfort called Bratton Camp, north-east of Westbury and near to the villages of Bratton and Edington. There is a car park with a viewing point on the B3098 just east of Westbury, and a car park above the horse on Westbury Hill. Note that the lanes up onto the hill are steep and narrow, and are used by horse riders.

There has been a white horse on the site for at least three hundred years or so. The earliest mention of it is in "Further Observations on the White Horse and other Antiquities in Berkshire" by the Reverend Wise, published in 1742. The white horse of the title is the Uffington horse, but the author also refers to the Westbury horse. He relates that he was told by local people that it had first been cut in the memory of persons still living or who had recently died, which suggests a date in the late sixteen hundreds. That horse was very different in design to the present one, and is perhaps Saxon or earlier in appearance. However, it could well have been a deliberate "mock-Saxon" pseudo-antique folly; there are no earlier references to a horse on the site, even by authors who mention the Uffington horse.

In 1778, a Mr. George Gee, who was steward to Lord Abingdon, had the horse re-cut to a design nearer to its present day appearance. He apparently felt that the older version was not a sufficiently good representation of a horse. One cannot help but wonder if the name G Gee had made him overly sensitive about horses.

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A century later the horse had become somewhat misshapen, and in 1873 it was restored according to the directions of a committee appointed for the purpose, and edging stones were added to help hold the chalk in place. The shape of the present horse dates from this restoration. In the early twentieth century, concrete was added to hold the edging stones in place. In the late nineteen-fifties, it was decided that it would considerably reduce the maintenance costs if the horse were covered in concrete. This work was carried out, and the concreting was repeated in 1995. Whether originally or at a later date, the concrete was painted white. Given that the horse is now concrete, it is perhaps ironic that the marvellous panoramic view from the site of the horse is spoilt only by being bisected by the massive chimney of the local cement works. The works is no longer operating, so perhaps the chimney will be demolished eventually.

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9. Challenge Calendar

White Horse Date The Alton Barnes white horse Sat 5th Apr The Broad Town white horse Sat 26th Apr The Cherhill or Oldbury white horse Sat 3rd May The new Devizes white horse Sat 10th May The Hackpen or Broad Hinton or Sat 14th Jun Winterbourne Bassett white horse The Marlborough or Preshute white Sat 21st Jun horse The new Pewsey white horse Sat 28th Jun The Westbury or Bratton white horse Sat 5th Jul