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Lost Hill Figure?

zygmunt_rocks_on

zygmunt_rocks_on

Gone But Not Forgotten
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Aug 19, 2001
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Just bought a book called Lost Gods Of Albion, by Paul Newman. It's all about hill figures.

Right at the end (page 209) he mentions The Black Horse of Bush Howe on the Howgill Fells near Sedbergh in the North Pennines. It's meant to be 427ft long and 361ft high and made up of black shale. Newman quotes Guy Ragland Phillips who researched it and says it looks like the representation of horses seen in ancient French and Spanish cave paintings.

Can't find ANYTHING about it on the net, and this is he first i've heard about it. Apparently the figure appears on no OS maps.

Any Ideas?:confused: :confused: :confused:
 
This hill-figure is described in "Brigantia-a mysteriography" by Guy Ragland Philips. It's out of print, but 2nd hand book dealers sell it for about £20.
In the book he describes finding the figure by "accident" and then it disappears in mist, never to be located again!. I've been walking in those parts myself and not seen it, but then I've not looked. You reminded me of it.
You are the only other person I've know of who has heard of it, fancy a trip to find it?:)
Given that it's an ancient hill carving, can it still be legible if it's not been maintained?
Anyways, it's in a beautiful, unspoilt part of the country. It's the only place I've been lately where I couldn't hear anything...no cars, no people, just the wind in the grass....
....and a load of Forteans looking for hidden hill figures!!

See you there!!
:)
 
I finally got round to attempting to find it!:rolleyes:


It doesn't look much like a horse though!
More like an amalgam of a horse/serpent/ostrich!
Or something!

You can check out me pics
HERE


(Hope the link works, it was playing up earlier! )
 
Doesn't look much like a horse to me, David - good pics and link, though.

Carole
 
Nice pictures, David, especially the one of you & the Black Horse.;)
 
I've read Newman's (very good) book that you mention and have heard of said hill figure. I must say the one in the photos doesn't look much like a typical hill figure - even old unkempt ones aren't really very visible (if at all - you may need to see an area from the air at certain times of the day to get the best chance). Those photos seem to show erosion more than anything else, IMHO.
 
David Raven said:
I finally
It doesn't look much like a horse though!
More like an amalgam of a horse/serpent/ostrich!
Or something!....
Click to expand...

The white horse at Uffington doesn't look much like a horse either. There's a legend that it's actually the dragon killed by St George. :hmph:

Good link and great pictures.
 
Great article, cool pics. I love pieces like this: the idea of a quest....this is real Forteana, where the reader is spirited away to another time and place, half myth perhaps, but tantalisingly close to our grasp.
 
Very interesting article. It looks to me more like something natural, but then I haven't been there so I can't say :)

Incidentally, does anyone know if there is a white horse on the hill between West Kennet long barrow and Silbury Hill? I was there on Saturday and insisted it was one, but everyone I was with said it couldn't be. The angle I was seeing it at meant it would only look like a horse from the top of Silbury Hill. It wasn't on any maps I checked, so I suppose it could just be naturally exposed flint.
 
is this a good place to bring up the Cerne Abbas giant (or should I start a new thread)?

I did a search of the Board and it's mentioned in a few places, but only in an oblique way.

Visited it when we were in Dorset at the beginning of March, and was interested to see that even the local signs and info make much of the notion that it was cut fairly recently: sometime between 1600 and 1800, and that it may have been a caricature of Oliver Cromwell.

This conflicts with what I'd always been led to believe, namely that the giant was an ancient fertility symbol that predated even the Romans.

If the latter is true, then since it needs recutting every ten years or so, you have to wonder who kept it going throughout the past few thousand years.

Or perhaps a farmer found an ancient, vague outline of a figure that had once existed there, and recut it himself after an interval of eons.
 
IIRC, the Cerne Abbas giant may indeed be a 'recent' creation - and not something from the Iron Age. Some specfic tests were done on it a few years ago, but I don't know what the results were (although I can try and find out). Issue 24 of the excelent '3rd Stone' magazine gives a good overview of the giant and it's history. It probably doesn't date from before the 17th century, but then again...It's thought that it can go for around 30 years without being recut, and it hasn't always been as distinct as it is now. There is even mention of a possible cloak on the figure, and even some small horns on his head.
 
While we're talking about lost hill figures, what was the final consensus on Lethbridge's Gog and Magog figures? I remember reading about them in "Mysteries" and I'm guessing that archaeological orthodoxy kind of dropped them because there was weird stuff involved or they didn't exist or something?
 
absolutely brilliant article, David. Good to see 'it' at long last!

Just a thought, but... IF this can be seen from the sea... well, doesn't it look lie an archetyp of a sea monster... IE, Morgawr?
 
I grew up about 3 miles from the Cerne Abbas giant. I was always led to believe that it was done to annoy the abbot of the church that used to sit at the bottom of the hill. He was known to be, how shall I put it, a bit of a ladies man! The giant in his excited state was just to take the mickey out of this guy and to let every one know what he was like. I also understood that the used to have some thing in his other hand.
Also I remember being taken there when I was small to cure my chicken pox. I have no idea why.

If you are wondering what we are talking about I've found this , and this , and this. It's also intersting to note that the man with the biggest part is not very far from the worlds smallest pub!
 
Geat site-really interesting! :)

I would reccomend The Lost Gods of Albion (Paul Newman) as a really good book-my friendly local esoteric remainders bookshop has copies for £4 and £5 (but they aren't mentioned on their website so I don't think you can get it online from them) .
 
Near the white horse at Uffington (which is the village at the bottom of my road) is a flat man made hill called Dragon Hill.

Legend has it that King George slew the dragon on this hill. On the top of the hill there are a couple of patches where nothing grows (it's chalky I believe) and this is supposed to be where the blood of the dragon contaminated the ground forever more...

Also I have been to the Cerne Abbas Giant, last year in fact, and have eaten at the smallest pub in England - the food is very good!
 
Thats the smallest pub in the world if you don't mind.
According to the 1988 guiness book of records, so it might be out of date by now.
 
It never looked much like a horse to me either, Carole! And I haven't seen the French and Spanish carvings that represent them, so can't verify if they're similar.

Interesting thought about the thing being an archetypal sea-monster, Zygmunt. 'Dobbies' are usually found around fords and bridges...hmmm! When I showed the pics to a friend the first thing he said was, 'looks more like the Loch Ness monster'! Maybe 'Dobbies' are relations? I'm sure I read somewhere that the LNM can travel overground and find other bodies of water(?!).

Whilst there, we compared the figure to other patches of scree nearby - it looked very similar.
I spoke to a retired geologist yesterday about the nature of 'scree'! He reckons that after 30 years the shape of natural scree would alter. The form as it is now looks very much like what Phillips sketched in the 70's...
Maybe there's a band of locals who collect rocks and keep it that shape?!:p

Maybe it is naturally occuring. If so, I find it interesting how the idea of it being a horse or 'dobbie' came about.
What significance did it have for the local population?


More questions that need answers!:rolleyes:
 
I have a friend from that area, and when I asked her about the 'black horse', she'd never heard of it but did know a legend of a white horse! However, I'd had rather a lot to drink at the time, so I can't remember...:rolleyes: but net time I see her i'll find out what I can and post it here.



BTW, In the bit of the West Riding where I grew up, it was pretty common to find 'dobby stones' near farm gates which were said to ward off the local 'little folk' (called 'hobs' locally)... I'm not sure if this tradition continues or not, I hope so!
 
zygmunt said:
BTW, In the bit of the West Riding where I grew up, it was pretty common to find 'dobby stones' near farm gates which were said to ward off the local 'little folk' (called 'hobs' locally)... I'm not sure if this tradition continues or not, I hope so!
Click to expand...

Yeah! I've got a 'hag-stone' hung up in my window!
It's a naturally-holed stone, picked it up off the beach at Whitby. :) When I was last there, I noticed other houses had them hanging up too. Superstitious lot, us Northerners!:p
 
zygmunt said:
BTW, In the bit of the West Riding where I grew up, it was pretty common to find 'dobby stones' near farm gates which were said to ward off the local 'little folk' (called 'hobs' locally)... I'm not sure if this tradition continues or not, I hope so!
Click to expand...

Dya reckon JK Rowlings heard about this one?
 
Breakfast said:
While we're talking about lost hill figures, what was the final consensus on Lethbridge's Gog and Magog figures? I remember reading about them in "Mysteries" and I'm guessing that archaeological orthodoxy kind of dropped them because there was weird stuff involved or they didn't exist or something?
Click to expand...

Discredited, I believe as most of the disturbances he uncovered turned out to be shallower thab tree anf fence-post holes and even the level of ploughing.

The bits he dug up are still visible at Wandlebury although overgrown with grass now - you can still more-or-less trace the outlines.

There is still a very high probability of a lost hill-figure on the hill somewhere though - it'd be interesting to have a search with modern techniques (if all the trees haven't destroyed all trace).
 
Asked my friend Steve Sayers, a mythologist, who knew RGP & he sent this:
"I've had a look at Newman's book and have found the quote. Newman refers to a paper that GRP wrote. I've not seen that but I've got two GRP books. The second one, The Unpolluted God doesn't say much about the black horse although it is mentioned. The first, Brigantia contains the following:"

'The mind-bending Brimham Rocks, not far away, and their attendant prehistoric cemetary of Graffa Plains, and the near-by Brimham Beacon, appear to be all on a single alignment - and one of not much importance. And yet that patch of scree in the Howgills, the Black Horse - so evanescent that some people can deny its existence at all - is a ley-node as important as Blakey Topping if not Clifton (incidentally nobody appears to have noticed that there is an almost identically shaped scree almost opposite the Black Horse on the other side of the valley.' [pp. 32-3]

'In reality, secrecy appears to be an inherent part of the cult as will be seen in connection with the Howgill Black Horse and dobbie; and it is believed that the Druids, though literate, would allow nothing of their cult to be committed to writing.' [p. 124]

'One might suspect a conspiracy of silence like that surrounding the decorated wells or the Howgill 'Black Horse'. Jenny Twigg and her Daughter Tib are given these names on the Ordnance Survey maps; but the Survey's original authority for the names was lost in a disasterous fire during the Second World War.' [pp. 134-5]

'In the Sedbergh area of Brigantia there is considerable evidence of something like a surviving dobbie-cult centred on the Black Horse of Bush Howe, at the head of the remote, deep-cut valley of Long Rigg Beck. Clouds and their shadows fall often on these hills. When they lift, they reveal for a moment a strange shape high on the flanks of Bush Howe: the dark outline of a huge black stallion that looks like the horses painted by ancient man in French and Spanish caves. It dominates the whole valley.
Some people of the Hoegills will tell you 'once you have seen it, then you never pass by without looking'. Others will say 'we never saw it; we don't believe it's there', and you know they are not at ease. Mrs Mary Roslin-Williams, of Lilly Mere House, Sedbergh, asked two young men if they knew anything about the Black Horse. They both swung round, looked straight at it and denied any knowledge of it. 'Never heard of it,' said one. 'We just don't know it is there,' said the other
Archaeologists are trying to decide whether the Horse was carved out of the hillside by man, or whether it is a piece of natural erosion. The main difficulty is to see it at all. Mrs Williams told me I would be lucky if I got a good view of it - and that if I went right up to it, I should find nothing there at all. She was right. On the first visit to the valley, mists came down and the Black Horse could be seen only by those who knew where it was. Next time, there was hazy sunshine. A whole reel of film was shot off. Something happened to the camers. Not a single picture developed. [pp191-2]
 
brian ellwood said:
And yet that patch of scree in the Howgills, the Black Horse - so evanescent that some people can deny its existence at all - is a ley-node as important as Blakey Topping if not Clifton (incidentally nobody appears to have noticed that there is an almost identically shaped scree almost opposite the Black Horse on the other side of the valley.' [pp. 32-3]
Click to expand...


I saw a similar scree figure on the way to the Horse. I wondered at first if it was the real thing! Here's a pic. (There are a couple of people on the slope above it, it's on the valley opposite the Black Horse...)
 
Sea/Lake monster link... ?

Those "dobbies" you mention remind me a lot of the lake/river dwelling "monsters" of Scottish and Irish folklore which F.W. Holliday wrote about in "The Dragon And The Disc" (very Fortean book, concerning dragon legends, lake monsters, UFOs and ley lines... anyone read it?) I cant remember the Irish name for them (a large chunk of the book was about searching some small lakes in west Ireland for them), but IIRC they are similar to the Scottish Kelpies (or is it Selkies? I always mix those up... one is the shape-shifting seal people, the other is the river-dwelling horse thing)...

anyway these creatures (cryptids?) were described as black, slimy, resembling a horse while on land but serpent-like in water, or as resembling a serpent with a horse's head, and were often seen as representing evil or deception (they were held responsible for leading humans and horses to drowning in "their" lakes and bogs). Maybe the "dobbies" were a Cumbrian variant of the same legend, and thus the "Black Horse" (if it is man-made) is a carving of a lake monster?
 
You're the right way around - the Kelpie is the water horse, the Selkie is the seal shifter.
 
Is it merely an illusion that I'm always way behind everyone else? There are worse things than being a wee bit slow on the uptake tho.

This is a great thread to read through carefully - I came to it via David Raven's pages, cited again for anyone just reading the last msg!

http://www.davidraven.net/

I don't know where to start, this sets off so many hares. Initial thoughts however:

a) literature (broadest sense) sweep on dobbie legends to find parallels and analogies (and possibly homologies LOL).

b) in depth going through local myths legends etc.

c) use of the ADS (and perhaps some of the other data services) at http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/ to get a full(er) picture of the landscape, adding in David's excellent work in the field. There is now a cross catalogue search http://ahds.ac.uk/collections/index.htm

d) exploration of the available aerial photographs. ADS doesn't hold them, does anyone have access to eg the cambridge archives? I think this is in the coverage offered by the commercial company http://www2.getmapping.com/home.asp but have never used them and it costs.

e) in the field an accurate survey of the spread as it is now would be fairly easy if we had the gps stuff, even if it had to be co-ordinated from the slope on the other side of the valley :rolleyes: Anyone done any of the phone tracking stuff for example? resolution? Or an EDM and logger? where could we borrow from? any local educational places or scout troops looking for projects?

f) in the field some sort of geophysical survey might enable comparison between this scree, other scree and non scree slopes, hoping to pick up any disturbance.

Thoughts in no especial order. Def not in a helpful order.

Plotting of the outline through time would give an idea of how fast this particular slope shifts. It is stable? over what period?renewed naturally? artificially?

Is the rock the same as surrounding screes? or... I don't know, a higher proportion of a size which would encourage stability, or maybe of a different colour which might sugggest human selection at some point.

We need to see the thing from where it was "meant" to be seen from. Wherever that is.... <dimple> sideviews are notoriously deceptive and maybe this turns into the parthenon frieze if you get the angle right? rectify the photos, plot the survey...

We know there is intervisibility between the site and the sea. We don't know what the site looks like from the sea or how wide an angle you can see it from. Is it distinctive or just all a grey scree slope at that distance... A GIS would answer this (but a boat trip would be more fun) as long as we include all the usual provisos of minor blocking features etc etc etc.


ramble ramble ramble... Kath:blah:
 
Working from the grid ref supplied by David:

there are 5 Somethings within a 10km radius

there are 40 Somethings within a 20km radius


I'm downloading the info on the 10km sites and will look at linking from here to maybe an excel file or something...

Thanks Dave:)
 
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