The white horse is one of England’s oldest symbols – carved into chalk hillsides millennia ago, and emblem of the Saxons
The White Horse holds four hundred and thirty-one reviews and a 4.0 – a fair score, right at the survey’s average, on a good sample – and it is named after one of the oldest and most evocative of all English symbols: the white horse, carved into the chalk hillsides thousands of years ago and borne as the emblem of the ancient Saxons.
The horses in the hills
England has a genuinely extraordinary ancient tradition: giant figures of white horses cut into the green turf of chalk hillsides, revealing the brilliant white chalk beneath, so that vast horse-figures gallop across the hills, visible for miles. The most famous and ancient of these is the Uffington White Horse in Oxfordshire – a stylised, elegant, almost abstract horse figure, cut into the hillside, which is astonishingly old: dating back some three thousand years, to the Bronze Age.
The Uffington horse is a genuine wonder – a monumental work of prehistoric art, maintained continuously for three millennia by the ancient practice of “scouring” (cleaning and re-chalking the figure), passed down across a hundred generations. Nobody knows for certain why it was made – a tribal emblem, a religious symbol, an offering to a horse-goddess – but it has galloped across its hillside since before the Romans came, one of the oldest and most mysterious monuments in Britain. Other chalk white horses, mostly more recent, are cut into hills across southern England.
The Saxon emblem
The white horse is also the ancient emblem of the Saxons – specifically associated with the county of Kent and with the legendary Saxon founders Hengist and Horsa. According to tradition, Hengist and Horsa were the brothers who led the first Saxon settlement of Britain in the fifth century, and their emblem was a white horse. (Fittingly, “Horsa” means “horse.”) The white horse became the symbol of Kent and remains the emblem of the county to this day, and it is associated more broadly with the Saxon and Germanic heritage of England.
The white horse thus carries a double weight of antiquity: the prehistoric chalk horses of the Bronze Age, and the Saxon white horse of the Dark Age founders. It is one of the deepest and most ancient symbols in the English landscape, reaching back to the very origins of the people and the land.
The noble horse
The horse itself, of course, has been humanity’s most important animal companion for thousands of years – the partner in war, work, travel and sport that shaped human civilisation until the age of the machine. The white horse in particular carries associations of purity, nobility, and the heroic – the white steed of the knight, the hero, the saint. Saint George, patron of England, is traditionally shown on a white horse. The white horse is the mount of heroes and champions, a symbol of nobility and virtue, which makes it a fine and dignified pub name.
The pub
A fair, average-scoring pub doing a 4.0 across a good sample, named after the white horse – the ancient chalk figure of the hills, the emblem of the Saxons, and the noble mount of heroes.
Verdict
Average by the numbers, but named after one of the most ancient and evocative of all English symbols – the white horse, carved into the chalk since the Bronze Age.
Have a pint under the white horse, and think of the great chalk figure at Uffington, galloping across its green hillside for three thousand years – the oldest white horse of them all.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
Specific knowledge layer aggressive. Every detail correct. Earned observation.