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- After over 200 years of deterioration and spasmodic ‘maintenance’ and ad hoc changes, the Osmington White Horse Restoration Project was initiated in May 2009. Its objective was to ensure that the equestrian figure of George III on the hill would once again follow the outline that was originally created in 1808.
- The project received a grant from Natural England, and it also depended heavily on local organisations and individuals volunteering their time and energy, together with research and technical expertise offered by Ordnance Survey and English Heritage.
- Each stage raised its own challenges. These ranged from having to remove 160 tonnes of superfluous stone without jeopardising the surrounding SSSI, having to work in all weathers on a steep hillside slope, and the considerable difficulty of locating the original outline after much change over the years and little evidence of its origin.
- Research was needed across widely disparate sources including oil paintings from the period, old photographs and Ordnance Survey maps, on-site analysis of earthworks, and the use of the latest GPS and mapping technologies. The interactive use of such a combination of sources is believed to have broken new ground in this type of restoration.
- We will have a National Monument to be proud of when its image is beamed around the world as a backcloth to the Sailing Olympics in 2012. Furthermore, that precise outline will now be preserved for posterity on Ordnance Survey records and the English Heritage National Monuments Record.