An Obsessive Photographer

By MadDogGiraffe

The 'Horse Monument' at Farley Mount, Winchester.

The Country Park is named after the famous monument to a horse, named "Beware Chalk Pit", which carried its owner to a racing victory in 1734, a year after having fallen into a chalk pit whilst out fox-hunting

The inscription on the plaque on the north wall reads:
Underneath lies buried a horse, the property of Paulet St. John Esq., that in the month of September 1733 leaped into a chalk pit twenty-five feet deep afoxhuntiing with his master on his back and in October 1734 he won the Hunters Plate on Worthy Downs and was rode by his owner and was entered in the name of "Beware Chalk Pit".

The views all around the Hampshire landscape are stunning, and the monument can also be seen from many distant places, particularly when the sun is reflected from the white walls.

The monument is a very different shape, and there are other references to a second monument having been built, perhaps to replace the square building above with one more capable of shedding the weather?

It is thought that the 2 cast iron plaques detailing the escapades of "Beware Chalk Pit", may have been commissioned for the second building, and this is reinforced by the discovery that the bricks used to build the pyramidal shape were not at all contemporary with the period of Paulet St. John.

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