History of red horse, cut into south Warwickshire's Edge Hill, is examined by experts in Tysoe

One theory is that the horse was cut into the hill on the orders of the Earl of Warwick as a monument to his horse, killed in battle in 1461.

Another says the Angles cut two horses into the escarpment when they colonised the Stour Valley in AD 600, the images being used as fertility offerings.

Lectures on the way horses (there have been five) were cut into Edge Hill, the research undertaken and the people behind it, the excavation and geophysics, other monuments in Britain, the geology around Tysoe and the history of horses are subjects in this a fascinating morning of talks organised by the Tysoe Heritage Research Group (THRG).

The event takes place in Tysoe Village Hall on Saturday, July 19 between 9am – 1pm. Refreshments will be available and the first lecture begins at 9.45am. Speakers include John Hunter, who will give an introduction setting the scene for a timeline study of the Red Horse, its mythology and its position on the landscape.

At 10am Gill Stewart will describe how the British landscape is littered with structures of monumental scale from the modern Angel of the North to the bronze age White Horse of Uffington - with the Red Horse of Tysoe in between.

At 10.20am, Rosemary Collier describes the Edge Hill escarpment through the ages, from Neolithic clearing of the ‘wildwood’, to the replanting of woodland on the hill. At 10.40am, David Freke describes the history of the horse, from domestication to exploitation as beasts of burden, slaughtered for food and thrown en masse into battles as cannon fodder. He says it is fitting that 84% of hill figures are of horses.

At 11.30am after coffee, David Low explains the myth, folklore, historical documentation, observation and decades of dedicated research that has been put into the Red Horse of Tysoe. This fascinating talk follows the timeline of the records, events and discoveries and tries to untangle fact from fiction.

There will be a clip from a 1980 film and at 11.55am Susie Carrdus and Kevin Wyles describe the passion with which a Banbury Grammar School teacher Kenneth Carrdus (Ms Carrdus’ father) and his pupil Graham Miller investigated the escarpment’s history.

At 12.15pm, David Freke will talk about the excavation and geophysics of Carrdus and Miller’s investigations.

There will be a raffle and Tysoe WI will provide refreshments.

The Tysoe Heritage Research Group is a community project carried out by local volunteers who are interested in Tysoe’s past. It is open to anyone curious about the area’s history from prehistoric times through to the present day.

Its website https://tysoehistory.org.uk/ shows numerous sources of evidence for Tysoe’s rich history. At one extreme is the presence of settlers from prehistoric, Iron Age, Roman and Medieval times evidenced from geophysical surveys, field walking and landscape study, to life in twentieth century Tysoe, recorded through oral histories.