Notes from a leaflet available at the Warminster Hub, June 2023:
Westbury White Horse is the oldest of the Wiltshire horses. It is well situated, being high on a very steep slope and overlooking a panoramic view. It is on Westbury Hill, on the edge of the Bratton Downs, immediately below the Iron Age hill fort called Bratton Camp, north-east of Westbury and near to the villages of Bratton and Edington. There is a car park with a viewing point on the B3098 just east of Westbury, and a car park above the horse on Westbury Hill. Note that the lanes up onto the hill are steep and narrow, and are used by horses.
There has been a white horse on the site for at least three hundred years or so. It was apparently told by local people that the horse had first been cut in memory of persons still living or who had recently died, which suggests a date in the late sixteen hundreds. It was very different in design to the present one, and is perhaps Saxon or earlier in appearance. However, it could well have been a deliberate “mock-Saxon” pseudo-antique folly.
In 1778, a Mr. George Gee, who was steward to Lord Abingdon, had the horse re-cut to a design nearer to its present day appearance. He apparently felt that the older version was not a sufficiently good representation of a horse.
A century later the horse had become somewhat misshapen, and in 1873 it was restored according to the directions of a committee appointed for the purpose, and edging stones were added to help hold the chalk in place. The shape of the present horse dates from this restoration. In the early twentieth century, concrete was added to hold the edging stones in place. In the late nineteen-fifties, it was decided that it would considerably reduce the maintenance costs if the horse was covered in concrete. This work was carried out, and the concreting was repeated in 1995. Whether originally or at a later date, the concrete was painted white.