Britain has some of the world’s finest and oldest museums, documenting everything from the nation’s art to its exploits in warfare. Britain is blessed with a rich history, and some of the world’s most popular museums can be visited on these shores. As well as insititutions like the British Museum or the Imperial War Museum, there is also the odd quirky or slightly unusual exhibition, for example the Museum of the White Horse, to keep visitors’ curiosity suitably piqued.

London’s Great Museums

London is Britain’s capital city, and the majority of Britain’s most visited museums are situated here. The British Museum, opened in 1759, occupies an iconic place in the nation’s history, and documents the history and culture of the world as thoroughly as any other venue on the planet.

The Natural History Museum documents the world’s wildlife, and its dinosaur exhibition is especially well-regarded. It was also visited by one of Britain’s mobile museums in 2007. Artist Tania Kovats put together The Museum of the White Horse, an exhibition which explored the Uffington White Horse, a Bronze Age hill monument. This ‘museum’ proved stimulating and interesting as it looked to investigate the relationship of the white horse symbol to places and the culture of Britain.

Other Places To Visit

Northern England is also not short of stimulating which explore regional and national history. The city of York has a rich Roman and Viking past, with its city walls still walked around by thousands of visitors every year. The Jorvik Viking Centre recreates a Viking street, complete with smells, while the Castle Musuem provides interesting snap shots of everyday from Yorkshire’s vivid past.

Glasgow’s Kelvin Art Gallery and Musuem is one of Scotland’s most visited museums, while Edinburgh Castle, in Scotland’s capital, has a rich range of exhibits and displays relating to Scotland’s past, including the room in which James VI of Scotland and I of England was born.

Whether on a day out or an extended stay in Britain, museums are a great way to explore the culture and history of a place. They offer portals of greater knowledge and appreciation, just waiting to be stepped through.

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Natural historical landmarks

The White Cliffs of Dover are a legendary natural landmark of the UK, serving as an iconic entrance to the British isles and a welcome sign that returning soldiers were close to home in past times of war. The Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland, formed by volcanic rock, is an amazing stepping-stone collection of rocks by the sea. And from the seas to the skies, Ben Nevis stretches up as far as 1,244 metres. It is the highest mountain in the British Isles, located in the Scottish Highlands. Also in Scotland is legendary Loch Ness, where Nessie the Loch Ness Monster, a prehistoric dinosaur that somehow lasted the lengths of time, is rumoured to have been seen. Cheddar Gorge, which is located right back down south in Somerset is another natural wonder, loved by ramblers and cave explorers for its fascinating topigraphy and endless species of flora and fauna.

Man-made historical landmarks

Stone Henge is one of the most famous historical landmarks in the UK, surrounded by much mystery as to how and why it was built on the Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire around 5,000 years ago. The White Horse of Uffington is almost as old, dating back more than 3,000 years ago to prehistoric times. The White Horse of Uffington was created with trenches filled with white chalk and is rejuvenated yearly. It is thought that the White Horse of Uffington was a tribal symbol associated with the ruling Uffington Castle within the precinct. Hadrians Wall is around 2,000 years ago and was originally built so that the Roman tribes could keep out the Scottish Pict tribes. And more recently, Windsor Castle was built around 900 years ago, originally by the Normans as a royal residence, and has been a popular tourist attraction ever since. Of course, Buckingham Palace is another royal residence that thousands of tourists flock to every year. Whilst in London, other famous UK landmarks to admire include Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, London Bridge and more recently, The Gherkin and The London Eye, which looks over the London skyline and the River Thames.

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One of England’s oldest and most mysterious monuments, the White Horse of Uffington is a magical site, especially if viewed fom the air. The Uffington White Horse is one of Britain’s oldest and most iconic historical sites. Established as dating back to pre-history, the White Horse is at least 3000 years old. Its design makes it unique amongst Britain’s various chalk figures, and it is by far the oldest of them.

A Tribal Symbol

The symbol, made by scouring out ditches and filling them with crushed chalk, can be found on the upper slopes of White Horse Hill, some five miles south of Faringdon, in Oxfordshire. Overlooking the Vale of the White Horse, the best views of the monument, unless a visitor has air transport, can be obtained around the villages of Longcot, Great Coxwell and Fernham, directly across the Vale.

Some historians and archaeologists have speculated that the monument may well be a tribal symbol, perhaps connected to the nearby hill fort at Uffington Castle. Previous assertions that the horse was in some way linked to the area’s Anglo-Saxon past and King Alfred have been dispelled, thanks to advanced archaeological techniques such as optically stimulated luminescence dating.

A White Horse Or Something Else?

There has been some debate over whether the deisgn of the Uffington monument is, in fact, a horse. The figure has a very long tail, and there have been assertions that it is a dragon. However, medieval documents dating back to the 11th Century refer to the Uffington monument as a White Horse, and the name has become traditional.

Keeping the monument clean in order for it to be clearly seen has been a part of local tradition as well. From the Middle Ages right through to the late 19th Century, scouring the horse was an activity funded by the local lord which took place every seven years. A festival was held around this event, involving activities such as cheese rolling, but the tradition has long lapsed.

The rolling of the cheeses took place on the steep-sided slopes of a valley known as ‘The Manger’. Folktales claim that this is where the White Horse of Uffington eats at night. That is doubtful, but what is certain is that the symbol on the hillside is one of England’s most enigmatic and distinctive monuments.

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The ‘Dreaming Spires’ have their fair share of supernatural urban legends, while giant white horses lurk in the hills nearby. Lying around 50 miles north west of England’s capital city London, Oxford is a pleasant English town, replete with history and the trappings of academia. With its university dating back to at least the 12th Century, it is also the home of a number of eerie and strange urban legends.

Ghostly Happenings

Anyone looking for ghostly events should visit Cry Baby Bridge, in the Oxford township of Metamora. A child’s cries can apparently be heard here if someone drives there and shuts of their car engine on the bridge. Some say this is the ghost of a baby who drowned there.

Anyone travelling to Lakeville Cemetery can find Dunn’s Tomb. Several tales haunt this place. Some say a pair of children mysteriously died there after being dared to spend the night, having been dropped off by a black car. Others speak of an axe murderer who hid his victims there. Visitors are said to see ghostly apparitions trying to reach their car, while others who have touched the tomb have been said to have found hand prints on their car afterwards.

Out Of Town

The White Horse of Uffington is a Bronze Age monument out in the countryside on the border with Berkshire. Although rural rather than urban, a number of myths and legends have sprung up about this ancient monument. One of the more fanciful is that a nearby valley known as ‘The Manger’ is where the horse, a giant chalk carving on a hillside, goes at nights to eat.

The White Horse of Uffington, which some academics have speculated may actually be a dragon instead, also enjoys some mythical links with other figures in English history. A persistent story links the horse with the story of Saint George and the dragon, and there is a flat topped hill nearby named Dragon Hill.The White Horse of Uffington was also linked for years with King Alfred the Great, the legendary monarch of Wessex who led the Saxons against the Danes.

Although stories like that are clearly untrue, they add to the sense of myth, fun and history that surrounds the town of Oxford. Whether ghostly hands or giant white horses thrill someone, they can find a tale to tell in this green corner of England.

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An artist who explores the effect of landscape and geological processes on human perceptions, Tania Kovats is perhaps best known for her connections with the Huffington White Horse. Tania Kovats is a British artist, who was born in London in 1966. She received her training at Newcastle Polytechnic and later the Royal College of Art. Sculpture is her primary mode of expression, with her thematic thinking based around landscape. Her work often incorporates geological processes, and she is interested in how landscape shapes culture and human understanding of the world.

An Artist of the Year

Tania Kovats once described herself as feeling ‘unemployable’ when she finished her studies in 1988, as she sought part time work that would allow her to continue being an artist. with a week working as a post woman on her resume, amongst other things, she was able to focus fully on art when she won a Barclay’s Young Artist of the Year award.

After that, Tania Kovats worked with the Laure Genillard Gallery, and also worked at the British School in Rome and with London gallery Asprey Jacques. Her more commercial, design work has included working on Birmingham’s Ikon Gallery move to a new location, as well as other projects involving architecture. Working to create a cultural dialogue between artists and architects was one of her central motivations behind this kind of project.

The Uffington White Horse

The ancient monument of the Uffington White Horse occupies a special place in Kovats’ story. The White Horse itself is a massive Bronze Age figure carved into the chalk of an Oxfordshire hillside, one of England’s most iconic antiquities. In 2007, Tania Kovats put together a peripatetic exhibition that adopted the monument as its central theme.

The exhibition then visited several locations throughout England, including the White Horse itself, Newbury Racecourse and the Natural History Musuem in London. The work explored people’s relationship with the White Horse monument itself, as well as wider cultural themes centred on white horses and how they are perceived and adopted as symbols.

With her iconic sculpture of a tree commissioned to help celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin in 2009, Tania Kovats continues to occupy a unique and important place in the ranks of British artists.

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The county of Oxfordshire is rich with historical landmarks including one of the most famous landmarks in the world, the White Horse of Uffington. This beautiful landmark is thought to originate from the Bronze Age and is estimated to be about 3,000 years old. The White Horse is formed by deep trenches on the side of a hill and filled with white chalk, and stretches in length to 110 meters. Best views of the landmark are from the air. The White Horse has inspired artist Tania Kovats to start a mobile museum called the Museum of the White Horse.

The Museum of the White Horse

The mobile museum was commissioned by the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art and has visited locations all over the South of England including White Horse Hill and the Uffington White Horse Show. The museums concept was created by the British artist Tania Kovats with the aim to travel around the South of England showing a range of archaeological artefacts. Tanya’s work involves expolring the on-going interest in the White Horse in Uffington in Oxfordshire.

The Horse Box Museum

From the outside the mobile museum has the appearance of a horsebox, but this small museum has achieved the aim to travel around England and has visited The University of Natural History in Oxfordshire, Abington County Hall Museum, Oxfordshire Museum Woodstock, the Vale and Download Museum Wantage, as well as the Natural History in London and the Cheltenham and Newbury Racecourse.

The concept was designed to bring more knowledge to the public about the amazing White Horse and about the history of Oxfordshire in general.

Location

The White Horse of Uffington is about 50 miles from London, and will take about 90 minutes to travel to. Other historical landmarks in the area are Dragon Hill, Uffington Castle, and the Manger. To explore these sites, travel to Oxfordshire using the M40 and take the A40 to Oxfordshire. Travel on the A40 until the exit for the B4507 and then take the minor road off for Uffington. This will lead to a car park where all the sites can be viewed.

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