The Whiteleaf Cross, Buckinghamshire
From the little lanes of Monks Risborough, with the Chilterns bearing down upon you, a strange white presence glimmers on the horizon. Not a human or animal form, but a cross on a thick pyramid, it is less bold and fantastical than other chalk figures, colder and more austere in its beauty. Gently glowing in front of the beech trees that tilt in the wind and with an Iron Age burial mound behind, it shimmers in mystery.
No one can say for sure when it was cut. A 16th-century reference to “Whitt Light Hill” could allude to the figure, but equally this could be a corruption of “Whitecleaf”, i.e. White Cliff, making reference to the chalk so potent it left marks on my leather jacket. The first definite reference was not for another 200 years, in 1742, by the antiquarian Francis Wise, and the various theories that have been put forward since have been of the most motley and fanciful kind.
Was it, as Wise thought, a heroic badge celebrating how Edward the Elder (Alfred the Great’s son) had repulsed a Viking army at nearby Blood Hill (now Bledhill) in 921? Branding the earth is an intrinsically territorial act; this would make sense, therefore, to signal proprietorship of contested territory. But then why wasn’t it mentioned for another 800 years?
Is it because it in fact had nothing to do with the Anglo-Saxons and was a labour-intensive engineering work from the Interregnum (1649-1660) instigated by the Puritans to keep the sinful occupied as the taverns, playhouses, bear pits and alehouses went dark? Peut-être, but the cross should not blinker us to Christianity. It was a powerful motif in antiquity, too.
The Romans executed criminals on crosses: could this have been an ancient place of execution or site of death rituals? Beneath the burial mound were found, in 1933, the smashed pieces of 50 pots from the Stone Age, suggestive of a funeral feast. But could we be interpreting the concept of a cross in the wrong way? Could it be less a symbol and more of a point-of-convergence, like nearby Gerrards Cross and Butler’s Cross?
The chalk figure lies near the ancient traders’ route Icknield Way, used by the British and Romans, and junctions were often marked by crosses and sometimes marketplaces. Or on the geographical theme, could it have been a military beacon, lit blistering white by bonfires, for Parliamentary forces to find their way through the Vale of Aylesbury to their headquarters in Amersham?
On my visit, the triangular base seemed perplexing. As a motif, it isn’t immediately suggestive of anything. Perhaps what we are looking at, as has been postulated, is censorship. Would the pious inhabitants of Monks Risborough or Missenden Abbey have tolerated an ancient pagan scar, perhaps of astrological significance or with phallic flourishes, in the hills above their houses of God? Are we perhaps looking at their censorship? Or have we got it all wrong and it in fact, as one historian postulates, marks the site of a fairy circle? Standing on the burial mound, gazing in the twilight at the mysterious chalk presence below, sometimes all you can hear is the sound of the wind in your ears. The joy is in the guessing.
The Wye Crown, Kent
Some emblems are mercifully less enigmatic. In Wye, Kent, on the shoulder of the North Downs Way, is a vast chalk crown. It was recently cleaned till it gleamed for the coronation of Charles III. But it was originally minted for another elderly monarch who’d waited a lifetime to put said symbol on his head: Edward VII, who became king in 1901, aged 59, after his mother’s 63-year rule.
It was cut, ingeniously, by sticking a paper crown onto a rotating telescope and directing several dozen students from the nearby agricultural college to stand in the correlating spots, to drive flags into the turf. How it gleamed, at the coronation, illuminated by bonfires and a thousand fairy lamps – the chalk blazing magnesium-white as the stars burned gently in the dark skies above.
About 180 feet tall, and visible from as far away as its namesake, Rye, it predictably became a celebrated site for other royal occasions, in 1935 for the silver jubilee of George V, and then again for Elizabeth II’s in 1977.
Britain’s lost chalk figures
In spite of their longevity – and ferocity – Britain’s hill figures are fragile. Without due care, they will become meagre outlines faintly pencilled into the ground. Then oblivion. Turf overgrows the chalk. Rain clogs up the trenches with soil. Rabbits gnaw at giants’ legs. To preserve them, they are rechalked, or, much more commonly, the figures are scoured – cleaned and brightened with a caustic substance like quicklime.
Through the ages, local communities were compelled to do this, “to repair and cleanse this landmark”, as Thomas Baskerville wrote of the Uffington Horse in the 17th century, “or else in time it may turn green, like the rest of the hill, and be forgotten”. Scourings usually took place at seven-year intervals and to keep spirits high the occasions were positively Saturnalian, involving, by Victorian times, sack-racing and cheese-rolling, and a pipe-smoking marathon to win a gallon of gin.
“The Old White Horse wants setting to rights, and the Squire has promised good cheer”, they wrote, “so we’ll give him a scrape to keep him in shape, and he’ll last for many a year.” Just imagine all the drunken peasants on their hands and knees, scrubbing the shaft of the giant’s penis.
These rituals meant the local community was invested in their local giant or horse and would not let them fall to decay. In theory. For in practice, precisely that did happen, sadly. The ghosts of lost chalk figures stalk the landscape. There was a Red Horse of Tysoe, a Laverstock Panda, a Plymouth Hoe Gogmagog, and the Giant Ghyst of Bristol, to name a few. And a whole herd of white horses.
So this most democratic medium of art which can’t be sold, sequestered or given away can be swallowed by the very earth into which it is carved. So treasure them while you can. And next time you drive past one, stop and look. You won’t regret it. For they are lime-lit silhouettes of ancient dreams.
Author and broadcaster Dr Matthew Green is the author of Shadowlands: A Journey through Lost Britain
Source link : https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/united-kingdom/the-truth-about-the-mysterious-chalk-figures-of-britain/
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Publish date : 2024-01-09 03:00:00
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