Keeping a 3,000-Year-Old Chalk Horse White: Long Now London and the Uffington Horse

The White Horse of Uffington is in what is now Oxfordshire. Nobody knows who made it. Daniel notes that for most of its history, the only thing known about it was that it had been there as long as anyone could remember. Its real age was established only in 1990, about 35 years before the talk. A team from Oxford Archaeology used optically stimulated luminescence testing, which showed that the chalk beneath the horse's markings had last been exposed to sunlight sometime between 1380 and 550 BCE.

Daniel places the horse within a wider landscape. Chalk downlands are an ecosystem found mainly in the British Isles, western continental Europe, and parts of the western US. Their rolling hills and soft underlying chalk suit the making of hill figures. These are geoglyphs made by cutting back the turf to expose the bright white chalk beneath. The south of England has geoglyphs of many sizes, styles, and themes. Daniel says the creation dates of many are fairly well known. For older ones, such as the Long Man of Wilmington, the history "does get quite fuzzy."

Daniel's central point is that a hill figure lasts only if it is maintained. Left untended, he says, it would be overgrown within a decade. The work of scouring and re-chalking is relatively simple. He compares it to gathering a crop or raising a barn: the work is much easier and more fun when treated as a social occasion.

Nobody knows how the horse was maintained during its first millennia. In recent centuries, though, the local landowner would call for a "pastime," a festival during which the horse was tended. Daniel says these happened roughly every seven years, and people might travel from across the county or even the country to attend. He adds that many of England's other geoglyphs are also horses. He cites archaeologist David Miles, who notes that the peak period for creating many of these lesser horses lines up with the dating of a pastime. Daniel suggests it is easy to imagine visitors going home to their villages and saying, "Let's make our own." He presents this as an imaginative reading, not as an established fact.

Daniel then turns to his own group. Long Now London has met, with varying frequency and effort, since at least 2010. Since 2018 it has met in a pub on the second Thursday of each month. In 2019 the group was looking for something it could maintain together, and it found the Uffington horse.

He describes how the work runs today. Earlier in the year the horse is scoured, which means weeded. Before the chalking, chalk from the other side of the hill is broken up into rubble sacks and brought close enough to be carried by hand as needed. Participants catch an early train out of London, travelling against the flow of the city's remaining commuters. Many come from London, while others come from Bristol, Oxford, nearby towns, or occasionally from overseas. Each person brings a lump hammer, gloves, and the kind of foam kneeler gardeners use. People take turns carrying buckets of chalk from the bags to wherever it is needed next. The National Trust team aims for an even spread across the whole horse over a few days. By the end, the horse, which had turned grey, is bright white again and ready for another year.

Every year, Daniel says, someone asks whether the work will be hard. His usual answer is that it will be as hard as you make it. The chalk breaks easily and quietly under the hammer without much swing. For people used to sitting indoors in chairs, the main hazards are sore knees and sunburn.

What he stresses most is that the work is social. Conversations start among groups working on particular areas, and discussion cross-pollinates as people change roles or positions. By late afternoon the conversation moves to a nearby village pub, where the local beer flows until it is time to catch the train home.

Daniel connects the horse to an idea he has heard in Long Now circles and believes he has read somewhere. It holds that there are four ways to let things last a very long time:

• make them tough
• forget about them
• make them hard to reach
• encourage people to care

He cites Jem Finer, who says he deliberately designed his Longplayer project to require upkeep. Finer, Daniel says, was as interested in the social structures needed for a piece of music to last 1,000 years as he was in how that music might sound.

The Uffington horse, in Daniel's view, belongs clearly to the fourth category. Nobody knows who made it, why, or what it was for. What is known is that it lasted because people cared for it. Their reasons may have changed over time, but in the end they handed the horse down. Daniel calls it "their gift to us," adding: "Now it is our turn to pass it on."

The talk ends with a recent development. During the 2020 lockdowns, Ian Godfrey, a researcher in Australia, compared early-20th-century aerial photographs with recent pictures of the horse. He found that although its overall length and height were unchanged, the figure had lost a large percentage of its volume since the 1930s. The site is a scheduled ancient monument, and with English Heritage's approval, plans are now underway to "fatten up" the horse. Daniel says that in the month of the talk, Long Now London was asked to help the National Trust and Oxford Archaeology carry out the work.

Daniel closes with questions rather than conclusions: What might you maintain? What near you do you want to last? He invites anyone with an answer to come and share it with the group, and to join them at the pub if they are in London on the second Thursday of any month.