The White Horse in Osmington, near Weymouth, has received a royal visit to commemorate the work of restoration work that has been going on since 2010. But what has this work involved?
The Chairman of the Osmington Society, Geoff Codd started the regeneration project in 2009 with the help of a grant from Natural England and a number of local organisations.
Experts from English Heritage and Ordinance Survey also worked with community volunteers to restore the White Horse after 200 years of corrosion.
Stewart Ainsworth, the Senior Architectural Investigator at English Heritage, said: “I started to look at art history and figures of George III on horseback and started to do a lot of investigation looking at paintings of George II and George III.
Mr Ainsworth discovered the sculpture is an outline of George II: “The original architect used a painting of King George II even though on this monument is King George III and that is what we are celebrating today.”
The White Horse is 85 metres long and nearly 100 meters high. To maintain the original outline GPS satellite and mapping technology was used.
John Horgan, a research scientist at the Ordinance Survey said: “I needed to map it down to centimetres of accuracy. When we plotted it back onto the ground, we reached a three centimetre accuracy.
“We needed to understand how to take all this information of all these different places and bring them together to recreate the outline of the horse.”
Stewart Ainsworth, architectural investigator; discusses this involvement with the regeneration project.
[audio:http://www.thebreaker.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/horse-audio-12.mp3|titles=Stewart Ainsworth]The founder of the project, Geoff Codd outlines why the Osmington Society decided to take on this project and what it means for the community.
[audio:http://www.thebreaker.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/horse-audio-2.mp3|titles=Geoff Codd Interview]
