18 Mar 2010

The Pagan Sites of Europe Remembered: (8) The White Horse of Uffington, Oxfordshire, England


Five miles south of the town of Faringdon on an Oxfordshire hillside can be found the famous White Horse of Uffington. Made by trenches in the hillside filled with crushed white chalk, it presents a stylized figure of a horse. Scientific dating techniques estimate its age at between 3400 and 2600 years old.

As it would scarcely be possible for Bronze or Iron Age Britons to create such a large, non-functional work without some kind of religious significance, the site must be regarded as a pagan site. It may possibly be connected to the worship of the important Celtic goddess Epona, the protector of horses and other beasts of burden.

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