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The Vale of the Red Horse is a rural area in South Warwickshire, England, below the escarpment of Edgehill in the parish of Tysoe. It takes its name from the hill figure of a horse once cut into the red clay. The figure, sometimes referred to as the Red Horse of Tysoe, was first recorded in 1607, and in its earliest form was nearly 100 yards long.〔Pevsner, Nikolaus and Wedgewood, Alexandra. ''The Buildings of England: Warwickshire'', Penguin, 1966, p.543〕 Various dates have been suggested for its creation, ranging from the Anglo-Saxon period to the 15th century. It was recut several times over the next two centuries in widely differing forms and locations, giving a total of at least five different horse figures in the Vale. The last Red Horse was finally covered over around 1910 or 1914. ==History of the Red Horse== Although the cartographer John Speed refers to Red Horse Vale in 1606,〔Newman, P. ''Lost Gods of Albion: the Chalk Hill-Figures of Britain'', History Press, 2009, p.48〕 the first clear mention of the Red Horse of Tysoe occurs in the 1607 edition of William Camden's ''Britannia''.〔Carrdus, Kenneth A. and Miller, George W. ''The Red Horse of Tysoe'', 1965, p.11〕 Camden wrote: :"''a great part of the very Vale is thereupon termed the Vale of the Red Horse, of the shape of a horse cut out in a red hill by the country people, hard by Pillerton''" A second mention of the Red Horse was made in 1612 by the Warwickshire poet Michael Drayton,〔Pevsner, Nikolaus and Wedgewood, Alexandra. ''The Buildings of England: Warwickshire'', Penguin, 1966, p.543〕 while another more explicit account was given by antiquary William Dugdale, who was given the task of recording features of interest around the country in case the Parliamentarians should seek to destroy them. In his ''Antiquities of Warwickshire Illustrated'' (1656), he wrote: :"''Within the precinct of the Mannour of Tishoe now belonging to the Earl of Northampton () there is cut upon the side of Edgehill the proportion of a Horse in a very large forme; which by reason of the ruddy colour of the earth is called the Red Horse, and giveth denomination to that fruitful and pleasant country thereabouts, commonly called the Vale of the Red Horse: the trenches of which ground where the shape of the said Horse is so cut out, being yearly scoured by a Freeholder in this Lordship, who holds certain lands there by that service.''" Whenever it was first cut, it appears that this first horse (called the "Great Horse" by its later researchers Carrdus and Miller) did not survive long after the 1650s.〔(The Red Horse of Tysoe ), the Hillfigure Homepage, accessed 16 July 2012〕 Later soil surveys clearly indicated a second, smaller horse (the "Foal") overlapping and adjacent to the "Great Horse", possibly identifiable with a figure seen by Celia Fiennes some thirty years after Dugdale: "''a red horse cut on some of the hills about (Vale ), and the Earth all looking red the horse lookes so as that of the white horse vale''".〔(Mercia's Lost Hillfigures ), the Hillfigure Homepage, accessed 16 July 2012〕〔(Red Horse photo I ), Hillfigure Homepage, accessed 16 July 2012〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Vale of the Red Horse」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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