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Hill Figures

Hill figures: The stories behind the scars on England's skin
By Bethan Bell BBC News

Hill figures, emblazoned like scar tissue across England's undulating landscape, hark back to times when gods were honoured and appeased by grand gestures.

Although horses - and some well-endowed giants - are perhaps the most well-known hill figures there are also some more unusual creatures and carvings.

A lion stands proudly in Bedfordshire. A kiwi in Wiltshire is a testament to the homesick New Zealand soldiers once stationed nearby.

Here are the stories behind some of the enormous symbols which have become part of the country's very fabric.

etc...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-39255651

"However, only the Osmington White Horse - a 260ft (79m) figure which prances across the South Dorset Downs - has a rider."

I'm familiar with this, as my parents used to live near there. And also because
"It was properly redone in time for the 2012 Olympics, when it could be seen by television viewers of sailing events held in Weymouth harbour", which of course I watched! :)
 
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gellatly68 said:
I was up at Uffington yesterday (on the equinox - a coincidence: I'm not a ley-line hunting hippy on a tofu bicycle ;) ). It's the first time I've been there for many years. Sitting just above the horse's head, I was utterly astonished to see something that I don't think has ever been commented on before - or at least, I'm not aware of any commentary. From the vantage of the horse's head, looking down onto Dragon Hill and the elevated area it sits on, there is an enormous simulacrum of a horse's head! It is as if you are looking at it from its shoulder. I have a pic which I will share once I've uploaded it, but I am amazed that noone has ever pointed it out before.
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When we were at Uffington last year, my elder daughter M (subject of my first ever post here) pointed that Dragon Hill actually looks like the head of a dragon, and foreleg. You can trace the body round the base of White Horse hill proper and make out a rear leg and tail. It's curled around, just as though there was a great hoard nestled in the curve. The likeness was quite striking that day.

If I remember rightly, our vantage point for this was as follows: we'd gone to the northern boundary fence of the first field through which the path leads from the car park to the top of the horse. We'd been taking in the vista out over the flatlands to the north, then she looked right, at which point all was revealed.
 
Coal said:
If it's a horse I'll eat my hat. My money's on a hare.
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I've doodled chalk hill-figures as hares in notebooks with the intent of producing a finished painting. Never got round to it though. They were based on the Uffington figure as well. Might see if I can scan some.

I've heard it mention that hares were introduced to Britain by the Romans, much like the Normans gave us rabbits several centuries later. This might go against your theory to the identity of the Uffington figure if the soil tests in the above BBC link are correct.
Soil tests show the horse has been there since between 1200 BC and 800 BC.
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For anyone as fascinated by hill figures as I am - which is to say, greatly; enthralling creations, all - I can heartily recommend the book Lost Gods of Albion by Paul Newman. It's highly readable and very thorough, covering everything from Uffington and Wilmington, through crosses and Tysoe, to the tableau woven across the Gogmagog Hills by the ever-enthusiastic TC Lethbridge. I've just started re-reading it for the first time in a while, and may post about things that especially catch my eye.

If nobody minds, that is. :)
 
WanderingFox said:
For anyone as fascinated by hill figures as I am - which is to say, greatly; enthralling creations, all - I can heartily recommend the book Lost Gods of Albion by Paul Newman. It's highly readable and very thorough, covering everything from Uffington and Wilmington, through crosses and Tysoe, to the tableau woven across the Gogmagog Hills by the ever-enthusiastic TC Lethbridge. I've just started re-reading it for the first time in a while, and may post about things that especially catch my eye.

If nobody minds, that is. :)
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Haven't read that book in a while, but I can also recommend it. I look forward to your posts.
 
I'll try not to disappoint. :)

First stop - the Vale of the White Horse. The figure's silt-dating is interesting indeed, placing it right in the middle of a turbulent period, the shift from Bronze Age to Iron Age. At first blush it doesn't seem all that likely a community of the era, small and fragmented as they seem to have chiefly been, would have been able to expend the time and effort needed to carve such a figure. That said, if the local community did manage to accrue appreciable size, strength and wealth - and the hill fort is pretty strong evidence that they did - they'd surely want to advertise it, to warn off others if nothing else; a huge white horse galloping across the hillside would be hard to top in that regard!

Given that other figures were or are near hill forts, such as the long-lost Wandlebury Giant and the recut Westbury Horse, was this a widespread practice? Considering how transient hill figures can be, so easily vanishing back into the landscape, we may never know, but it's certainly fun to speculate. :)
 
I made my first visit to Uffington in the Summer and I agree with you Krepostnoi, the hill itself does have an anthropomorphic shape. My mate and I thought it looked like a curled, crescent shaped sleeping beast.

"placing it right in the middle of a turbulent period, the shift from Bronze Age to Iron Age."

I find this interesting because my own personal musings are that the place was special because the ancients saw something in the natural shape of the hill. The horse/hare/fox was added later as a sort of graffiti from an ascendant tribe, a statement that this place is now ours.

As a side note my friend and I also found the Blowing Stone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowing_Stone
and had a good old blow. Am still waiting for the Saxon troops and my coronation.
 
pandacracker said:
"placing it right in the middle of a turbulent period, the shift from Bronze Age to Iron Age."

I find this interesting because my own personal musings are that the place was special because the ancients saw something in the natural shape of the hill. The horse/hare/fox was added later as a sort of graffiti from an ascendant tribe, a statement that this place is now ours.
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You make a lot of sense; as much as I'd like it to be a fox :D I'd lean towards them interpreting the shape of the land as a horse and then reproducing that in the chalk, simply because equines were, apparently, potent symbols of power in this era, largely thanks to the advent and dominance in combat of the horseback warrior. The statement would therefore show not only that the land was theirs, but that they had the means to protect it.
 
I was at the cerne abbas giant today, he was hugely impressive. I am probably being overly simplistic, but for some reason I think fertility symbol. Can you get more of a fertility symbol?
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This was a snap on my mobile, I will post pictures taken on my camera when I get back to civilization .
 
titch said:
I was at the cerne abbas giant today, he was hugely impressive. I am probably being overly simplistic, but for some reason I think fertility symbol. Can you get more of a fertility symbol?
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This was a snap on my mobile, I will post pictures taken on my camera when I get back to civilization .
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Didn't women who wanted to be sure of becoming pregnant use to sit on his willy with their pants off? Did I also read that she should take the bloke with her and practice there to be sure?
 
escargot said:
Didn't women who wanted to be sure of becoming pregnant use to sit on his willy with their pants off? Did I also read that she should take the bloke with her and practice there to be sure?
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Young women would sit on his erection and pray they didn't die old maids, and couples would shag on the stupendous stiffie in order to cure barrenness....so I read anyway, I doubt the national trust would let them do that nowadays
 
As promised, some more pictures, feast your eyes on this magnificent member
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AlchoPwn said:
I heard the figure dates from the 17th Century English Civil War period and was a Royalist mockery of Oliver Cromwell, depicting the Puritan leader with a priapic member.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerne_Abbas_Giant
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I would like to think of him as much more ancient.
1. It may have been the giant was grassed over for periods so not mentioned till late in his life.
2 . In my expert opinion he just LOOKS celtic.
3. I want it to be very ancient.

But since he has no need for viagra maybe he is still a teenager after all.
 
titch said:
I would like to think of him as much more ancient.
1. It may have been the giant was grassed over for periods so not mentioned till late in his life.
2 . In my expert opinion he just LOOKS celtic.
3. I want it to be very ancient.
But since he has no need for viagra maybe he is still a teenager after all.
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I agree on all your points, but I suspect point 3 is the most important. You also need to remember that there are no Celts in Britain, the ancient Britons were of Beaker People DNA, i.e. Picts not Celtoi at all. The only Celtic DNA in Ireland prior to 1066 for example came from the Gallogachs who were Nordic mercenaries. The Romans actually had more Celtic DNA than the Britons. Of course the Britons fell within the ambit of Celtic Culture, then Roman Culture, but really on the issue of "what is Celtic culture?" we cannot easily say how much the Mainland influenced the British Isles and vice versa. A fine example of this was when Christianity, which had caught on in Ireland, spread to the mainland as Ireland sent out missionaries in the period of 560-1000AD. There is nothing to suggest this hadn't happened before, and what we take for Celtic culture is actually imported British Pict Culture.

http://www.libraryireland.com/irishnationality/irish-mission.php
 
I thought it was agreed (like all the other things that are agreed) that the Cerne Abbas giant is Heracles? There's definitely a (now overgrown) skin hanging from his outstretched left arm. If so, he could even be Roman-influenced.
 
stuneville said:
I thought it was agreed (like all the other things that are agreed) that the Cerne Abbas giant is Heracles? There's definitely a (now overgrown) skin hanging from his outstretched left arm. If so, he could even be Roman-influenced.
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But Cromwell was referred to as the English heracles, so that could make the giant more likely to be modern?
 
Nye Bevan's portrait drawn on mountain by BGT artist.

A huge portrait of NHS founder, Aneurin "Nye" Bevan, has been unveiled on a Welsh mountainside to celebrate 70 years of the service.
Britain's Got Talent finalist Nathan Wyburn created the 12m sq piece of art on Trefil moorland, three miles (5km) north of Bevan's home town, Tredegar.
The portrait is made from soil and white stone dust from a local quarry.
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-44687924



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Hopefully I'm putting this in the right place. Just read Gogmagog: Buried Gods by TC Lethbridge, and have a few thoughts.

I've been aware of the reputed Wandlebury hill figures for quite some time, and found them fascinating despite the disdain and dismissal of those writing about them, so I was delighted to find this book, to finally have Lethbridge's side of the story. I ended up getting a whole lot more than I was bargaining for.

The actual investigation of the hillside and discovery of the 'figures' only takes up a modest portion of the book, arguably the strongest portion. The bulk of it is a search for the meaning behind them, which is such an unrelenting torrent of information, ideas and theories I honestly struggled to keep up. Lethbridge had no shortage of enthusiasm, that's for sure, and it proves, for me, more of a hindrance than a help. There's undoubtedly good stuff in here - about the flow and evolution and interweaving of religious beliefs, for example - but parsing it is near-impossible when he just doesn't stop piling up the gods and goddesses and myths and cultures and tribes and historical eras and I think I need to lie down in a darkened room...

I've a feeling several readings will be needed to fully understand everything Lethbridge is getting at and touching on in this book. I still don't really know what to think of the figures themselves, beyond there maybe being scraps of one or two genuine ones there, remnants of images from different eras, and Lethbridge's febrile mind took them and a few random geological bits and pieces and ran like crazy with them. He certainly strikes me as someone who could have benefited from pausing to catch his breath once in a while, rather than charging endlessly on in a fury of invention and speculation.

Anyone else have any thoughts?
 
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