White Horse of Uffington
The White Horse of Uffington on the Berkshire Downs is the oldest and most celebrated chalk hill figure in Britain, a stylised horse figure approximately 110 metres long created by cutting through the turf to the white chalk beneath that dates from the late Bronze Age, approximately 3000 years ago, making it by far the oldest of the hill figures that dot the chalk downland of southern England. The figure is managed by the National Trust and is a Scheduled Ancient Monument of outstanding national importance. The horse is visible from a wide area of the Vale of the White Horse below and is best appreciated from a distance, its stylised, almost abstract form quite different from the more naturalistic figures created in later periods. The figure has been maintained in good condition by periodic scouring, a practice documented from the medieval period when the local population gathered to clean the figure in a ceremony that combined practical maintenance with festive celebration. The tradition of scouring is one of the most sustained examples of community maintenance of a prehistoric monument in Britain. The Bronze Age hillfort of Uffington Castle immediately above the horse, the flat-topped chalk mound of Dragon Hill below the scarp where St George is said to have slain the dragon and the Ridgeway ancient track traversing the ridge provide a concentration of prehistoric landscape features that make the Uffington area one of the most richly layered prehistoric sites in Oxfordshire. The view from the scarp edge above the horse encompasses the entire Vale of the White Horse below in one of the finest panoramas available from the Berkshire Downs.