Uffington White Horse forum 29 room
Image by Chance
Uffington White Horse

uffington horse and the sun

close
more_vert
Evergreen Dazed E
Evergreen Dazed Aug 18, 2017 16:37:51
Replying to thesweetcheat

thesweetcheat wrote:
tiompan wrote:
From the horse , given clear skies , you can face every sun set and sun rise on every day of the year , so what ? it is meaningless .
But why are you assuming the intention is to be looking "from the horse".

The view of the horse is far better appreciated from a distance, from the vale below. I don't think it matters what you can see from the horse. What matters is what you can see when viewing the horse from its optimum position (i.e. from a distance). And from a distance, the head of the horse is on the right, as will the setting sun be from the point of a viewer looking towards the horse from the vale.

Well, then every menhir is aligned perfectly to the setting sun.
Just stand in the right place and bingo.

How do you know 'what matters' in terms of where to stand, to see this or that?

T tiompan
tiompan Aug 18, 2017 16:53:48
Replying to Evergreen Dazed

Evergreen Dazed wrote:
thesweetcheat wrote:
tiompan wrote:
From the horse , given clear skies , you can face every sun set and sun rise on every day of the year , so what ? it is meaningless .
But why are you assuming the intention is to be looking "from the horse".

The view of the horse is far better appreciated from a distance, from the vale below. I don't think it matters what you can see from the horse. What matters is what you can see when viewing the horse from its optimum position (i.e. from a distance). And from a distance, the head of the horse is on the right, as will the setting sun be from the point of a viewer looking towards the horse from the vale.

Well, then every menhir is aligned perfectly to the setting sun.
Just stand in the right place and bingo.

How do you know 'what matters' in terms of where to stand, to see this or that?

Exactly . What matters is some form of indication i.e. a third component like another stone ,or stones , an avenue , a passage etc. Similarly any old pair of stones in a stone circle will also provide apparently "meaningful" "alignments " to astro events but unless there is something that gives them greater salience than the others you will have a huge choice and nothing that is convincing . A bigger stone and an outlier would fit the bill as suggesting that there might be something being indicated .

N nigelswift
nigelswift Aug 18, 2017 16:58:14
Replying to Evergreen Dazed

There's certainly no clue as to whether "the view from" or "the view to" is meant. All we have is whether either of them seems to work (in any one of a thousand ways).

One interesting "view from" involves Sandy Gerrard's work on some stone rows which display sudden "landscape treats" as you walk along them with an accuracy and suddenness that even I find it hard to put down to possible chance. Compared with those, saying a big horse on a hill has some sort of positional significance is very hard work.

T thesweetcheat
thesweetcheat Aug 18, 2017 19:29:07
Replying to Evergreen Dazed

It's hardly the same thing really. You can only see the horse at all from some directions, and it only looks like a horse from even less directions.

Surely a massive great big chalk horse carved on a hill is meant to be viewed, not be a viewpoint?

You can't say that at all about a single stone which can be viewed from any angle you want and lined up with anything else you can see.

Like all websites everywhere, we use cookies.