The Grey Horse of Westbury.

It will have been noted from one or two earlier posts that I’m not the greatest fan of the tourist industry. However they may appear on the surface, industries are essentially heartless at their core, and their existence is dependent on the profit motive being paramount. In the case of tourism, it has an unfortunate habit of adulterating the integrity of an area or attraction, often destroying the very thing that took people there in the first place.

I learned something interesting today about the famous Westbury White Horse in Wiltshire, England. It’s one of many figures carved into the landscape by removing the topsoil to leave a picture formed by the underlying chalk rock. Nobody knows how old the Westbury figure is, although the Uffington White Horse in Oxfordshire has been dated to around 1,000 BCE. It seems that whoever owns the land on which the Westbury figure is situated was concerned that natural erosion would wear it away and the ‘tourist attraction’ would be lost. To prevent this happening, they covered it with concrete. So it isn’t a white chalk figure any more, it’s a grey concrete one. Not quite the same thing, is it?