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Westbury White Horse
Westbury or Bratton White Horse is a hill figure on the escarpment of Salisbury Plain, approximately east of Westbury in Wiltshire, England. Located on the edge of Bratton Downs and lying just below an Iron Age hill fort, it is the oldest of several white horses carved in Wiltshire. It was restored in 1778, an action which may have obliterated another horse that had occupied the same slope. A contemporary engraving from around 1772 appears to show a horse facing in the opposite direction that was rather smaller than the present figure. There is, however, no documentation or other evidence for the existence of a chalk horse at Westbury before 1772. The horse is tall and wide and has been adopted as a symbol for the town of Westbury, appearing on welcome signs and the logo of its tourist information centre. It is also considered a symbol for Wiltshire as a whole. Origins Although it is the oldest of the Wiltshire white horses, the origin of Westbury White Horse is obsc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bratton, Wiltshire
Bratton is a village and civil parish in the English county of Wiltshire, about east of Westbury. The village lies under the northern slope of Salisbury Plain, on the B3098 Westbury – Market Lavington road. History The massive earthworks of the Iron Age hill fort known as Bratton Castle (or Bratton Camp) are within the parish. Bratton was a tithing of the ancient parish of Westbury until 1894, when it became a separate civil parish. An agricultural machinery business, R & J Reeves & Son, had a central site in Bratton village which became known as Bratton Iron Works. Begun as a blacksmith in 1799, the company became nationally known in the 19th century and was the largest employer in the area. The firm closed in 1970 and the site is now the village play area. The Stert and Westbury Railway was built across the parish in 1900. The local station was in the adjacent parish of Edington and was called Edington & Bratton; the station closed to passengers in 1952 and to goods ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Westbury White Horse
Westbury or Bratton White Horse is a hill figure on the escarpment of Salisbury Plain, approximately east of Westbury in Wiltshire, England. Located on the edge of Bratton Downs and lying just below an Iron Age hill fort, it is the oldest of several white horses carved in Wiltshire. It was restored in 1778, an action which may have obliterated another horse that had occupied the same slope. A contemporary engraving from around 1772 appears to show a horse facing in the opposite direction that was rather smaller than the present figure. There is, however, no documentation or other evidence for the existence of a chalk horse at Westbury before 1772. The horse is tall and wide and has been adopted as a symbol for the town of Westbury, appearing on welcome signs and the logo of its tourist information centre. It is also considered a symbol for Wiltshire as a whole. Origins Although it is the oldest of the Wiltshire white horses, the origin of Westbury White Horse is obsc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paragliding Above Westbury White Horse - Geograph
Paragliding is the recreational and competitive adventure sport of flying paragliders: lightweight, free-flying, foot-launched glider aircraft with no rigid primary structure. The pilot sits in a harness or lies supine in a cocoon-like 'pod' suspended below a fabric wing. Wing shape is maintained by the suspension lines, the pressure of air entering vents in the front of the wing, and the aerodynamic forces of the air flowing over the outside. Despite not using an engine, paraglider flights can last many hours and cover many hundreds of kilometres, though flights of one to two hours and covering some tens of kilometres are more the norm. By skillful exploitation of sources of lift, the pilot may gain height, often climbing to altitudes of a few thousand metres. History In 1966, Canadian Domina Jalbert was granted a patent for a ''multi-cell wing type aerial device—''"a wing having a flexible canopy constituting an upper skin and with a plurality of longitudinally extend ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Battle Of Edington
At the Battle of Edington, an army of the kingdom of Wessex under Alfred the Great defeated the Great Heathen Army led by the Dane Guthrum on a date between 6 and 12 May 878, resulting in the Treaty of Wedmore later the same year. Primary sources locate the battle at "''Eðandun''". Until a scholarly consensus linked the battle site with the present-day village of Edington in Wiltshire, it was known as the Battle of Ethandun. This name continues to be used. Events before the battle The first Viking raid on Anglo-Saxon England is thought to have occurred between 786 and 802 at Portland in the Kingdom of Wessex, when three Norse ships arrived; their men killed King Beorhtric's reeve.Sawyer, ''Illustrated History of Vikings'', pp. 50-51 At the other end of the country, in the Kingdom of Northumbria, during 793 the holy island of Lindisfarne was raided. After the sacking of Lindisfarne, Viking raids around the coasts were somewhat sporadic until the 830s, when the attacks be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dark Ages (historiography)
The ''Dark Ages'' is a term for the Early Middle Ages, or occasionally the entire Middle Ages, in Western Europe after the fall of the Western Roman Empire that characterises it as marked by economic, intellectual and cultural decline. The concept of a "Dark Age" originated in the 1330s with the Italian scholar Petrarch, who regarded the post-Roman centuries as "dark" compared to the "light" of classical antiquity.. Reprinted from: The term employs traditional black-and-white dualism, light-versus-darkness imagery to contrast the era's "darkness" (ignorance and error) with earlier and later periods of "light" (knowledge and understanding). The phrase ''Dark Age'' itself derives from the Latin ''saeculum obscurum'', originally applied by Caesar Baronius in 1602 when he referred to a tumultuous period in the 10th and 11th centuries. The concept thus came to characterize the entire Middle Ages as a time of intellectual darkness in Europe between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saxons
The Saxons ( la, Saxones, german: Sachsen, ang, Seaxan, osx, Sahson, nds, Sassen, nl, Saksen) were a group of Germanic * * * * peoples whose name was given in the early Middle Ages to a large country (Old Saxony, la, Saxonia) near the North Sea coast of northern Germania, in what is now Germany. In the late Roman Empire, the name was used to refer to Germanic coastal raiders, and as a name similar to the later "Viking". Their origins are believed to be in or near the German North Sea coast where they appear later, in Carolingian times. In Merovingian times, continental Saxons had been associated with the activity and settlements on the coast of what later became Normandy. Their precise origins are uncertain, and they are sometimes described as fighting inland, coming into conflict with the Franks and Thuringians. There is possibly a single classical reference to a smaller homeland of an early Saxon tribe, but its interpretation is disputed. According to this proposal, the S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Continental Europe
Continental Europe or mainland Europe is the contiguous continent of Europe, excluding its surrounding islands. It can also be referred to ambiguously as the European continent, – which can conversely mean the whole of Europe – and, by some, simply as the Continent. When Eurasia is regarded as a single continent, Europe is treated as a subcontinent, and called as European subcontinent. The old notion of Europe as a cultural term was centred on core Europe (''Kerneuropa''), the continental territory of the historical Carolingian Empire, corresponding to modern France, Italy, German-speaking Europe and the Benelux states (historical Austrasia). This historical core of "Carolingian Europe" was consciously invoked in the 1950s as the historical ethno-cultural basis for the prospective European integration (see also Multi-speed Europe). Usage The most common definition of Mainland Europe excludes these continental islands: the Greek Islands, Cyprus, Malta, Sicily, Sa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second principal period of the three-age system proposed in 1836 by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen for classifying and studying ancient societies and history. An ancient civilization is deemed to be part of the Bronze Age because it either produced bronze by smelting its own copper and alloying it with tin, arsenic, or other metals, or traded other items for bronze from production areas elsewhere. Bronze is harder and more durable than the other metals available at the time, allowing Bronze Age civilizations to gain a technological advantage. While terrestrial iron is naturally abundant, the higher temperature required for smelting, , in addition to the greater difficulty of working with the metal, placed it out of reach of common use until the end o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the north west of South East England. It is a mainly rural county, with its largest settlement being the city of Oxford. The county is a centre of research and development, primarily due to the work of the University of Oxford and several notable science parks. These include the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus and Milton Park, both situated around the towns of Didcot and Abingdon-on-Thames. It is a landlocked county, bordered by six counties: Berkshire to the south, Buckinghamshire to the east, Wiltshire to the south west, Gloucestershire to the west, Warwickshire to the north west, and Northamptonshire to the north east. Oxfordshire is locally governed by Oxfordshire County Council, together with local councils of its five non-metropolitan districts: City of Oxford, Cherwell, South Oxfordshire, Vale of White Horse, and West Oxfordshire. Present-day Oxfordshire spanning the area south of the Thames was h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Uffington, Oxfordshire
Uffington is a village and civil parish in Oxfordshire, about south of Faringdon and west of Wantage. The 2011 Census recorded the parish's population as 783. It was originally in the county of Berkshire, but under the Local Government Act 1972 it was transferred for local government purposes to Oxfordshire. The Uffington White Horse hill figure is on the Berkshire Downs on the south side of the parish. The village has been twinned with Le Chevain in France since 1991. Geography and character The village is about north of the foot of the Berkshire Downs escarpment and north of the B4507 road that links Wantage and Ashbury. Its older houses are built of chalk blocks and thatched. The parish church is nicknamed "The Cathedral of the Vale". The village is in the middle of the Vale of White Horse, which is the valley of the River Ock. Like many parishes in the Vale, Uffington parish is long and thin, running north–south, so that it includes both low-lying arable land an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vale Of White Horse
The Vale of White Horse is a local government district of Oxfordshire in England. It was historically a north-west projection of Berkshire. The area is commonly referred to as the 'Vale of ''the'' White Horse'. It is crossed by the Ridgeway National Trail in its far south, across the North Wessex Downs AONB at the junction of four counties. The northern boundary is defined by the River Thames. The name refers to Uffington White Horse, a prehistoric hill figure. History The area has been long settled as a productive fertile chalklands above well-drained clay valleys and well-farmed with many small woodlands and hills between the Berkshire Downs and the River Thames on its north and east sides. It is named after the prominent and large Bronze Age-founded Uffington White Horse hill figure. The name "Vale of the White Horse" predates the present-day local authority district, having been described, for example, in the 1870-72 ''Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales''. The distri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Uffington White Horse
The Uffington White Horse is a prehistoric hill figure, long, formed from deep trenches filled with crushed white chalk. The figure is situated on the upper slopes of White Horse Hill in the English civil parish of Uffington (in the ceremonial county of Oxfordshire and historic county of Berkshire), some east of Swindon, south of the town of Faringdon and a similar distance west of the town of Wantage; or south of Uffington. The hill forms a part of the scarp of the Berkshire Downs and overlooks the Vale of White Horse to the north. The best views of the figure are obtained from the air, or from directly across the Vale, particularly around the villages of Great Coxwell, Longcot, and Fernham. The Uffington White Horse was created some time between 1380 and 550 , during the late Bronze Age or early Iron Age. The site is owned and managed by the National Trust and is a scheduled monument. ''The Guardian'' stated in 2003 that "for more than 3,000 years, the Uff ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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