Recent from talks
Red Horse of Tysoe
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Red Horse of Tysoe
The Red Horse of Tysoe was a hill figure in the parish of Tysoe, South Warwickshire, England, cut into the red clay below the escarpment of Edgehill. It gave its name to the surrounding area, which is still known as the Vale of Red Horse or Red Horse Vale. The figure was first recorded in 1607, and in its earliest form was nearly 100 yards long. Various dates have been suggested for its creation, ranging from the Anglo-Saxon period to the 15th century.
It was recut several times over the next two centuries in widely differing forms and locations, giving a total of at least five different horse figures in the Vale. The last Red Horse was finally covered over around 1910 or 1914.
Although the cartographer John Speed refers to Red Horse Vale in 1606, the first clear mention of the Red Horse of Tysoe occurs in the 1607 edition of William Camden's Britannia. Camden wrote:
a great part of the very Vale is thereupon termed the Vale of Red Horse, of the shape of a horse cut out in a red hill by the country people, hard by Pillerton.
A second mention of the Red Horse was made in 1612 by the Warwickshire poet Michael Drayton, while another more explicit account was given by antiquary William Dugdale, who was given the task of recording features of interest around the country in case the Parliamentarians should seek to destroy them. In his Antiquities of Warwickshire Illustrated (1656), he wrote:
Within the precinct of the Mannour of Tishoe now belonging to the Earl of Northampton [...] there is cut upon the side of Edgehill the proportion of a Horse in a very large forme; which by reason of the ruddy colour of the earth is called the Red Horse, and giveth denomination to that fruitful and pleasant country thereabouts, commonly called the Vale of the Red Horse: the trenches of which ground where the shape of the said Horse is so cut out, being yearly scoured by a Freeholder in this Lordship, who holds certain lands there by that service.
Dugdale added that the figure was located "in the Red Horse ground, opposite the east window of Tysoe church".
Whenever it was first cut, it appears that this first horse (called the "Great Horse" by its later researchers Carrdus and Miller) did not survive long after the 1650s. Later soil surveys clearly indicated a second, smaller horse (the "Foal") overlapping and adjacent to the "Great Horse", possibly identifiable with a figure seen by Celia Fiennes some thirty years after Dugdale: "a red horse cut on some of the hills about [the Vale], and the Earth all looking red the horse lookes so as that of the white horse vale". It has also been suggested that the "Foal" and the larger horse were a group of figures representing a mare and her foal.
Hub AI
Red Horse of Tysoe AI simulator
(@Red Horse of Tysoe_simulator)
Red Horse of Tysoe
The Red Horse of Tysoe was a hill figure in the parish of Tysoe, South Warwickshire, England, cut into the red clay below the escarpment of Edgehill. It gave its name to the surrounding area, which is still known as the Vale of Red Horse or Red Horse Vale. The figure was first recorded in 1607, and in its earliest form was nearly 100 yards long. Various dates have been suggested for its creation, ranging from the Anglo-Saxon period to the 15th century.
It was recut several times over the next two centuries in widely differing forms and locations, giving a total of at least five different horse figures in the Vale. The last Red Horse was finally covered over around 1910 or 1914.
Although the cartographer John Speed refers to Red Horse Vale in 1606, the first clear mention of the Red Horse of Tysoe occurs in the 1607 edition of William Camden's Britannia. Camden wrote:
a great part of the very Vale is thereupon termed the Vale of Red Horse, of the shape of a horse cut out in a red hill by the country people, hard by Pillerton.
A second mention of the Red Horse was made in 1612 by the Warwickshire poet Michael Drayton, while another more explicit account was given by antiquary William Dugdale, who was given the task of recording features of interest around the country in case the Parliamentarians should seek to destroy them. In his Antiquities of Warwickshire Illustrated (1656), he wrote:
Within the precinct of the Mannour of Tishoe now belonging to the Earl of Northampton [...] there is cut upon the side of Edgehill the proportion of a Horse in a very large forme; which by reason of the ruddy colour of the earth is called the Red Horse, and giveth denomination to that fruitful and pleasant country thereabouts, commonly called the Vale of the Red Horse: the trenches of which ground where the shape of the said Horse is so cut out, being yearly scoured by a Freeholder in this Lordship, who holds certain lands there by that service.
Dugdale added that the figure was located "in the Red Horse ground, opposite the east window of Tysoe church".
Whenever it was first cut, it appears that this first horse (called the "Great Horse" by its later researchers Carrdus and Miller) did not survive long after the 1650s. Later soil surveys clearly indicated a second, smaller horse (the "Foal") overlapping and adjacent to the "Great Horse", possibly identifiable with a figure seen by Celia Fiennes some thirty years after Dugdale: "a red horse cut on some of the hills about [the Vale], and the Earth all looking red the horse lookes so as that of the white horse vale". It has also been suggested that the "Foal" and the larger horse were a group of figures representing a mare and her foal.