Hooves on a hill: The White Horse of Uffington

The White Horse of Uffington is one of the first great pictorial works of British art. It is a horse – but why carve a horse on a hill? Scientific dating in the 90s revealed it was cut in the Bronze Age, when Celts worshipped a horse god called Epona in Gaul and Rhiannon in Britain. The curving stylised beauty of this chalk animal evokes a half-known world of myth when horses were magical and the earth itself enchanted
Illustration: Photograph: Alamy