Hill figures

A hill figure is a large scale visual representation of some kind of symbol, often in human or animal form, which has been created by cutting away turf and subsoil on a steep hillslope so that the underlying bedrock is visible as a contrast to the surrounding turf. They are usually easier to see from some distance away. Some examples are obvious white figures in chalk or limestone which have been kept scoured and have not become overgrown. Those that are not kept clean may be recognised either as slight indentations from close up or in outline from a distance when there is a small quantity of snow on the ground or in dry periods when they occur as "soil marks".

They are often interpreted as religious and ritual symbols, representing gods, or as places for fertility rites. More recently hill figures have been carved for public enjoyment, for example the Whipsnade lion, or as memorials such as the emblems on the Berkshire Downs. They therefore vary considerably in date from the Iron Age to the 20th century. A figure of an aeroplane was cut in the hills at Dover in 1909 to commemorate the first cross-channel flight by Blerot.

There are as yet no radiocarbon dates from hill figures. Excavation has produced limited artefactual dating evidence, as at The Long Man of Wilmington hill figure in Sussex, where possible Roman fired clay fragments were produced. Eighteenth and nineteenth centuries hill figures have been dated by documentary evidence. Letters have been discovered which date the first cutting of the white horse near Litlington, East Sussex to 1836 by James Pagden, a farmer and his brothers. The Cerne Abbas Giant, Dorset, is dated prior to the mid eighteenth century and the Uffington horse, Berkshire to before the seventeenth century, when an obligation to scour the horse of weeds was first placed on the tenants of the neighbouring manors.  Attempts have been made to date hill figures by their relation to figures on other materials, for example coins, and by association with nearby monuments. It was for this reason that many hill figures were initially ascribed a Bronze Age date as they often occur near barrows or an Iron Age date because of finds of Iron Age coins nearby.

Hill figures are largely confined to the Southern England, especially to the chalklands of Wiltshire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Kent and Sussex, with a couple of examples in Cambridgeshire, Dorset and Somerset. They cluster especially in Wiltshire, where most of the examples are eighteenth century onwards and nearly all are representations of horses. Individual types sometimes occur in pairs or groups. There are two surviving hill figures in Buckinghamshire, both chalk-cut crosses at Whiteleaf Hill and Bledlow Cross. Although there have been recent excavations at Whiteleaf it was not possible to get any dating evidence for this monument. There are also records of a post-medieval to nineteenth century hill figure of a lion on Nowers Hill in Pitstone.