Join us for a few days touring around Wiltshire, The Cotswolds and Avon with a sneaky dash to Oxfordshire for good measure. Lots of history, stone circles, burial chambers and hill forts amongst other items of interest.
Each place of interest is shown on its own separate article, reached by clicking/tapping the photos below. A link on each page will bring you back here.
Thursday 30 May 1998. Leaving Oxford behind, we drove on to Uffington, the site of our last white horse of the week and a place of considerable mystery.
The horse is thought to be the oldest of the white horses of England and is not a true representation, but rather a cartoon, loose formed, styled for speed and grace, picked out on the crest of the highest hill in the area as though galloping for the safety of the hill fort a few yards away.
We parked the car and started walking towards the horse, but meeting a white sheep first... As we approached the hill we could see... something...
There is a problem here. The horse is on the crest of the highest hill... There was someone else, a couple walking down from the horse.
"Where can you see it from?" the chap asked me in a puzzled voice. I pointed at the sky.
"Up there," I said. The only way you can see the entire drawing is from the air. From the ground you can only see bits of it.
This could explain why it looks so little like an actual horse of course... You have to wonder what contemporary opinion was at completion. Did the commissioning king or chieftain exclaim "Bloody Nora, what a pillock! How is anybody supposed to see it?!?" and have the unfortunate artist put to death on the spot? Or is it a horse at all?
Just below the horse is a smaller flat-topped hill with a large white spot in the middle of it. This, according to an ancient folklore, is where St George slew the dragon. It is said that the dragon's blood, being spilt here, inhibits the growth of grass, leaving the white spot forever to mark the place. Which is fine except that there are no records to show that St George ever came to Britain at all.
"Yuck!" his page said, "Britain? Why would you go there? Full of blue-painted twits and dragons all over the place! They'll take you for a dragon slayer!"
"They'll take me to their hearts or not at all..."
There is a school of thought that says the drawing is of the dragon, not a horse. Another that it is St George's steed.
We left the horse and turned to have a look at the near by hillfort. Turning away from Dragon Hill (that's really its name so someone believed in it!) we saw another natural feature. The Manger. Formed by melting ice as the ice age ended (always a good time for ice to melt...) it is the supernatural feeding place of the white horse which on moonlit nights (this is the legend you know, I'm not making it up!) canters or rolls down the hill (alright... I did make that bit about rolling up...) to feed. Three sets of brackets in a single sentence, by heck, that's not bad!
And here's Miss Franny trogging along the rampart wall of Uffington hillfort. It's quite a large hillfort and has been suggested for the site of King Arthur's Battle of Badon, mentioned in the Annals of Wales. It's in a strategic position as it protects the ancient trackway known as the Ridgeway. But there are so many contenders for Badon and it is unlikely we shall ever know.
So another school of thought is that the horse is that of King Arthur. The scouring of the white horse, to stop grass growing to obliterate it, was turned into a festival that occurred every seven years and included games such as wrestling and cheese rolling. Cheese rolling sounds a crazy sport doesn't it? You can't help wondering if it started by accident when some twit dropped his cheese and had to hare off down the hill after it and everyone laughed and rolled their own cheeses after him in an attempt to knock him down, thus inventing the game of skittles...
Where are we going next? Blimey, this holiday is almost done!
Monday 27 May 1998. It was a public holiday. The other guests were hoping for a busy day at the craft fair and reported that there had been a lot for people to see and do the previous day. This was a double edged sword for stallholders of course, as the public could watch the attractions and spend less time (and money) on the craft stalls. We wished them well for the day to come and took our leave of Wychurch Farm. For the rest of the holiday we would look for somewhere to sleep during each day.
We had decided to go to Old Sarum, the old fortified town that stood above, and predated, Salisbury. Our route took us past our second white horse of the week, on the hillside at Westbury.
It's been on a bit of a diet, this horse... Recently I read reports that the white horses of southern Britain may not be as old as previously thought and that some of them may be as recent as the 18th or 19th Century. The one that everyone still thinks is old is perhaps the most mysterious - the one at Uffington in Oxfordshire. We're a long way from that, but we will get there towards the end of this holiday so that's something to look forward to.
Driving on from Westbury, we passed Stonehenge on our right hand side. Robbed of it's atmosphere by high wire fences, turnstiles and the distance at which visitors are kept, the monument never-the-less retains its majestic dignity and one is always humbled at the thought of the human effort to build such a structure with bare hands.
It prompted me to make a slight detour to see the site of a similarly laid out structure but using wood instead of stone: Woodhenge. The wood of course has long-since vanished.
Concrete markers have been erected to show the sites of the excavated post holes. The single prehistoric grave had been freshly covered with a bunch of wild flowers. This is not a well known monument like Stonehenge or Avebury. There is even a very similar site in Lancashire on the Bleasdale hills, a few minutes drive from where I live, though it is on private land and not accessible by the public. Whatever the mystery surrounding the site there is something non-mysterious and distinctly non-magical about concrete posts...
Sunday 26 May 1998. We were heading for Avebury's massive prehistoric earthworks.
The road I chose took us past the white horse at Cherhill. There are several of these horses in the area. They date from prehistory to this century and are "drawn" by scraping the turf from the underlying chalk and repeated weedings known as scourings. In the photo if you follow the horizon above the horse to the right you will see two small bumps. They are the earthworks of an Iron Age hillfort.
Avebury never ceases to fascinate me. I think after Glastonbury it is the most magical place in England. Forget Stonehenge, if it's atmosphere you want then come to Avebury. The huge earthworks and the remains of the stone circle entirely surround the village.
The whole of this is then surrounded with a ditch and outer rampart. And what a ditch! Bear in mind that it will have filled up with a fair bit of dust and debris over the last couple of thousand years...
Inside the immense henge of Avebury are the remains of smaller stone circles. Some of these stones were destroyed a few hundred years ago when the villagers sought to use the stone for building. Large fires were started around stones which were then cooled rapidly by dousing them with water. The expansion due to the heat followed by rapid contraction caused the stones to split apart. Reportedly the practice stopped after a man was blinded by a flying chip of stone causing superstitious minds to race into overdrive! Small concrete obelisks have been set where stones have been destroyed.
Also note how few people walk inside this stone circle and how the ones that do stay close to the perimeter. On our first visit our daughter Gillian who was about 6 at the time, refused point blank to walk inside the circle saying that it "felt funny".
Many ley lines cross here. In the village itself is The Henge Shop selling souvenirs and books about the village and Wiltshire and stone circles in general. A shame about the dull weather. We have a couple more stops during the day and then the sun will come out later so we will return to see Avebury at its most spectacular best.
