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The Uffington White Horse is a highly stylised hill figure, 374 feet (110 m) long, cut out of the turf on the upper slopes of Uffington Castle, a largely Iron Age hill fort near The Ridgeway, in the civil parish of Uffington in the English county of Oxfordshire (formerly Berkshire). It is located some five miles (eight kilometres) west of the town of Wantage. Best views of the horse are obtained from the north, particularly from around the village of Great Coxwell. The hill upon which the figure is drawn is called White Horse Hill and the hills immediately surrounding it, the White Horse Hills.

The figure has been shown to date back some 3,000 years, to the Bronze Age, based on optically stimulated luminescence dating carried out following archaeological in vestigations in 1994. These studies produced three dates ranging between 1400 and 600 BC. Iron Age coins have been found that bear a representation of the Uffington White Horse re-inforcing the early dating ot this artefact, thus further discounting alternate theories that the figure was created in the Early Middle Ages.[1] Numerous other prominent prehistoric sites are located nearby, notably Wayland's Smithy, a long barrow less than two kilometres to the west.

It has long been debated whether the chalk figure is intended to represent a horse or some other animal. However, it has been called a horse since the eleventh century at least. An Abingdon cartulary, written by monks on vellum, between 1072 and 1084, refers to "mons albi equi" at Uffington ("the White Horse Hill").

The horse is thought to represent a tribal symbol perhaps connected with the builders of Uffington Castle. A more modern theory suggests that the stylised horse figure acted as a sign to people passing on The Ridgeway advertising horses being sold or catered for at the hillfort. It is quite similar to horses depicted on pre-Roman British coinage and the Marlborough bucket. For centuries, however, local people have maintained that it is a portrait of the dragon slain by Saint George on the nearby Dragon Hill.

Up until the late 19th century the horse was scoured every seven years as part of a more general local fair held on the hill. However, when the regular cleaning is halted the figure quickly becomes obscured. It has always needed frequent work, currently by English Heritage, for the figure to remain visible.

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