Between the Ickleton-way and White-horse-hill, under the Horse, stands a large Barrow, which the common people living hereabouts, call DRAGON-HILL, and they have a tradition, that “Here St George killed the Dragon.” The Horse too is brought into the Legend, as belonging to that Saint, who is usually pictured on Horse-back. They shew besides a bare place on the top of it, which is a plain of about forty or fifty yards over, where the turf, I don’t know by what means, can gain no footing; which they imagine proceeds “from the venemous blood that issued from the Dragon’s wound.”
Francis Wise: ‘A letter to Dr Mead concerning some antiquities in Berkshire’ (1738).