THE WHITE HORSE HILL.
THOSE who, after the death of Mr. Thomas Hughes, have once more turned to the opening chapters of " Tom Brown's Schooldays," will not lose an occasion of visiting the author's home at Uffington, and complying with his genial advice to visit the White Horse Hill. From whatever side this commanding down is approached the sense of leaving the world of to-day, and entering another belonging to a different race of men, increases, and even possesses the imagination. Even in the brief interval which has elapsed since Thomas Hughes spent his boyhood in the village down, the retreat of the men of to-day from the high downs is almost complete, and scarcely a sign of man's handiwork in our time competes with the ineffaceable memorials of the ancient worshippers of the great White Horse. Stonehenge itself is not more solitary than the fortress and the idol left on "the high places" of the hill, or the "sacred road" leading onwards and upwards along the spine of the downs to the precinct of the god, and the gate of the city of refuge to which in time of war and trouble the tribes flocked from the fields and pastures of the vale.
The Ridgeway, banked and floored with its silent pave- ment of turf, is the ancient and natural approach to the summit of White Horse Hill. From above the Blowing Stone it runs with straight and gradual ascent to the gates of Uffington Castle, banked and bordered with its ancient grasses, beside which on either side the broad acres of modern pasture and sanfoin, on the land which has relapsed from cultivation, look like the weeds of yesterday. The ancient road, along which the war-chariots rolled to the gathering- place of the tribes, and the legionaries tramped to meet them on the thousand acres of level turf which lay south of the Castle gate, is untrodden even by the beasts which were till lately driven up from the towns and villages, from Swindon westwards, to the hills of Bath, and feed their way at leisure to Reading and London, before the Great Western Railway cut the vale. Even the corn-waggons, which set out at midnight from the vale to the markets of Newbury and Hungerford, with bells and lanterns across the downs, have deserted the ancient track, and only the sheep and shepherds use it in the early morning hours, on their road to the gathering of the flocks at llsley Fair. Thus the Ridgeway has gone back to its ancient state, uncut by wheels and ungrazed by cattle, and if any one will ascend the Blowing Stone Hill in one of the rough carte of the country, he may gallop the three miles to the back of the White Horse, and enjoy the sensations of a British chief driving his springless car to the fortress of his tribe.
To this day no Berkshire man or woman of the vale or of the downs beyond can refuse the chance of a visit to the White Horse. It is a yearly pilgrimage with most, and deemed " lucky " by all. Poor and rich alike yield to the exhilaration of a visit to its summit, and linger in delight in the coombes and valleys at its foot. The ever-blowing wind upon the downs comes fresh across millions of acres of English soil, redolent not of the sea, but of the scents and odours of the inland country. The kestrels and crows meet- ing the blast skim low, almost touching the tall grasses, the horses neigh and paw the ground, the lambs scamper from the shelter of the lambing-pens, where the ewes with their shepherd lie basking, back to wind and face to sun, and even the hares on the rolling shoulders of the hill are bigger, redder, and bolder than on any other region in the down country.
Who first built the fortress on the hill will probably remain a mystery for ever. It is one of a chain of such camps, not always built with such unique advantages of site as that on the White Horse Hill, but placed with rare military art to command the natural roads leading from the inner country of the downs to the vale, as well as to intercept the main line of advance along the " Ridge." White Horse camp, though the most striking, is not even the largest within the area of the Berkshire Downs. It contains fourteen acres of land. Letcombe Castle, which flanks the Ridge seven miles to the east, holds twenty acres, and a thousand years of cultivation, inside and out- side the camp, have scarcely altered the symmetry of its ditch and ramparts. In each the entrance is placed, not on the side most defensible by Nature, but opposite a broad plain, where the chariots could mancenvre, wheel, and charge. At Letcombe a broad and level way, like that into the pre. cincte of Stonehenge, leads into the fort. In the White Horse camp this is tortuous and flanked by ramparts, a change probably due to later garrisons, unequipped with the chariots of its first builders. Two waggons abreast might be driven into Letcombe Castle gate. A " chariot " could not now be driven into the sister-camp, for the present writer tried the experiment. The entrance was effected, the " chariot " smashed. Ancient though it remains, the camp has been modernised,—perhaps by Roman en. gineers. Not so the Horse. No ancient monument is better cared for. The turf never seems to encroach upon the chalk rubble of its flanks, and the growth of down weeds and flowers is kept in check. "The groom of the White Horse" lives in the manor-house down below, and the image is maintained in its primitive colour of creamy grey. Below the Horse, facing the vale, lies that exquisite amphitheatre, flanked by its altar mound, the Dragon's Hill, which moderns call the " Manger," divided by vertical ripples of grass-covered chalk, and falling to where the waters break from the foot to form the sources of the river Ock, and the brook where " Tom Brown" used to fish with the village boys of Uffington. Over this elope the wheel was rolled at the scouring of the White Horse, the prize for catching which was a 50 lb. cheese from a milking of the biggest herd of cows in the vale. Mr. Thomas Hughes survived the winner of the cheese. Jonathan Legge, of Childrey, whose victory, but not the cause of it, is chronicled in "The Scouring of the White Horse," died in 1886; and this is the manner in which he trained to win. Jonathan lived at Childrey Warren, at the bottom of a deep hollow in the downs, with sides almost as tall and as upright
as the " Manger " itself. There are many such "bowls" in the downs, and few even of the shepherds will run down them in a straight line, as it was clear must be done in a race down the Manger after the wheel. Every evening for months, Jonathan Legge would go up to the top of the Punch-bowl in Childrey Warren, and practise running down it. At first he ran slanting, but in time he learnt to go straight, or altered his headlong course at will. In the evenings he played• his fiddle, for like most of the Warren people he " had a bit of music ;" and every night he thought himself more certain of the cheese. When the great day came, the wheel was started at the crest, and after rolling 50 ft. took a great bound of a 100 ft., and then went straight for the bottom- The tribe of Smiths, Blends, and Archers, gipsies from the- vale, had vowed to have the cheese, and started in full cry eager and tumultuous, but could not face the straight descent. Jonathan ran as straight as the wheel rolled. He " flew " the road, dashed down the treacherous slopes of slippery grass, and as the wheel ran along the last gradient and curved towards the left, he changed his course and seized it as it tottered on the upward curve at the right of the flat field below.
In the whole line of the foot of the White Horse Hill there is a "grace of congruity" which extends even to its vegeta- tion. The coombes sweep downwards from their first begin. nings as tiny hollows in the rolling down to where the waters rise in deep glens with a gradual transition from bare grass to thickets, and groves of trees associated in every legend with the names of Merlin, Puck, and King Arthur. Ancient, stunted thorns mingle their branches with those of crab- trees so old that their branches sweep the ground, now covered with a pink show of blossom. Blackthorn and juniper fringe the lower coombes, and nothing but the oak is wanting to complete the semblance of a Druid's grove beneath the slopes of the bill of sacrifice.
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