The White Horse Stone is a name given to two separate sarsen megaliths east of Blue Bell Hill, near the hamlet of Sandling and the village of Aylesford, north of Maidstone, in the south-eastern English county of Kent.
The Lower White Horse Stone was destroyed prior to 1834, at which time the surviving Upper White Horse Stone took on its name and folkloric associations. Various archaeologists have suggested—although not proven—that the stones were each part of chambered long barrows constructed in the fourth millennium BC, during Britain's Early Neolithic period.
If the White Horse Stones were originally components of chambered long barrows, then they would have been erected by pastoralist communities shortly after the introduction of agriculture to Britain from continental Europe. Long-barrow building was an architectural tradition widespread across Neolithic Europe although comprised various localised regional variants; one of these was in the vicinity of the River Medway, examples of which are now known as the Medway Megaliths. The White Horse Stones lie on the eastern side of the river, along with the chambered long barrows of Little Kit's Coty House, Kit's Coty House, the (now destroyed) Smythe's Megalith, and the Coffin Stone, which may be a part of a fourth. Three other examples, the Coldrum Long Barrow, Addington Long Barrow, and Chestnuts Long Barrow, remain on the western side of the river. Excavation has revealed the existence of an Early Neolithic longhouse near to the stone.
By the 19th century, antiquarians were speculating that the Lower White Horse Stone may have taken its name from the White Horse of Kent, which they in turn believed was the flag of the legendary fifth-century Anglo-Saxon warriors Hengest and Horsa. Subsequent historical research has not accepted this interpretation. After the stone was destroyed, the stories associated with it were transposed to a nearby sarsen boulder, which became known as the Upper White Horse Stone. Since at least the 1980s, the latter has been viewed as a sacred site by various Folkish Heathen groups, including the Odinic Rite, because of its folkloric associations with Hengest and Horsa and the Anglo-Saxon Migration. As well as performing rituals there, they have opposed vandalism of the stone and campaigned to stop development in the vicinity.
The WhiteHorseStone is a name given to two separate sarsen megaliths east of Blue Bell Hill, near the hamlet of Sandling and the village of Aylesford...
White (horse) Whitehorse (disambiguation) Whitehorse of Kent WhiteHorse Prophecy WhiteHorseStone Legendary horses in the Jura Legendary horses of Pas-de-Calais...
Westbury WhiteHorse or Bratton WhiteHorse is a hill figure on the escarpment of Salisbury Plain, approximately 1.5 mi (2.4 km) east of Westbury in Wiltshire...
The Uffington WhiteHorse is a prehistoric hill figure, 110 m (360 ft) long, formed from deep trenches filled with crushed white chalk. The figure is situated...
The whitehorse of Kent, known colloquially as the whitehorse rampant, is a symbol of the county of Kent, in south-east England. The heraldic image is...
The Osmington WhiteHorse is a hill figure cut into the limestone of Osmington Hill just north of Weymouth in Dorset in 1808. It is in the South Dorset...
The Vale of WhiteHorse is a local government district of Oxfordshire in England. It was historically part of Berkshire. The area is commonly referred...
third oldest of several such whitehorses in Great Britain, with only the Uffington WhiteHorse and the Westbury WhiteHorse being older. The figure is...
Saxon steed The Battle of Burford and the Golden Dragon Welsh dragon WhiteHorseStone Wyvern "Northwest Wales" (PDF). Retrieved September 1, 2017. "The...
A horse hoof is the lower extremity of each leg of a horse, the part that makes contact with the ground and carries the weight of the animal. It is both...
WhiteHorse Temple (Chinese: 白馬寺) is a Buddhist temple in Luoyang, Henan that, according to tradition, is the first Buddhist temple in China, having been...
list of horses in mythology and folklore. Embarr, Niamh and Lugh's horse Epona, Gaulish horse goddess Kelpie, a mythical Celtic water horse Liath Macha...
The WhiteHorse Prophecy is the popular name of an influential but disputed version of a statement on the future of the Latter Day Saints (popularly called...
Coty House, and several other stones that might have once been parts of chambered tombs, most notably the WhiteHorseStone. It is not known if they were...
is the legendary ghost of the German Hohenzollern dynasty. Seeing a whitehorse in a dream is said to be presentiment of death. In the Book of Revelation...
Crazy Horse received a black stone from a medicine man named Horn Chips to protect his horse, a black-and-white pinto he named Inyan (rock or stone). He...
the Coffin Stone and WhiteHorseStone, are located on the Medway's eastern side. Built out of earth and around fifty local sarsen-stone megaliths, the...
The Ballad of the WhiteHorse is a poem by G. K. Chesterton about the idealised exploits of the Saxon King Alfred the Great, published in 1911. Written...
Hackpen WhiteHorse is a chalk hill figure of a whitehorse on Hackpen Hill, located below The Ridgeway on the edge of the Marlborough Downs, two miles...
to fetch stone with his stallion Svaðilfari, and out from a wood ran a mare. The mare neighed at Svaðilfari, and "realizing what kind of horse it was,"...
First Carved Stone Park Opens". October 03, 2000. Peoples Daily. Retrieved 9 May 2014. Wikimedia Commons has media related to WhiteHorse Park. 32°03′38″N...
east of WhiteHorse Hill. Blowingstone Hill is part of the escarpment of the Berkshire Downs, at the crest of which is The Ridgeway. The stone is capable...
Global Information
