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The Ham Hill or Inkpen white horse
Ordnance Survey grid reference: SU 348 621
This is one of the two Wiltshire white horses which are totally lost. Just inside the Wiltshire border, it was on a steep slope on Ham Hill near Inkpen Beacon five miles south of Hungerford, and will have been easily visible from the valley below.
The Ham Hill white horse was cut by a Mr Wright, who had recently bought a property in the valley, Ham Spray House, from where a clear view of the site could be had. It was probably cut in the late eighteen-sixties, and certainly before 1877, as it is shown on an Ordnance Survey map of that year. Unlike most white horses, this one was created merely by excavating the shape; no chalk infilling was used.
In the course of time the property changed hands, and the new owner had no interest in maintaining the horse. It will not have taken long for the soil to have encroached on the bare chalk, and for the horse to have become completely invisible. As there was no chalk infilling to lay hidden under the soil, nothing at all now remains of the Ham Hill white horse.
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