The Westbury white horse is the oldest of the Wiltshire horses. It is also one of the best 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 hillfort called Bratton Camp, north-east of Westbury and near to the villages of Bratton and Edington
There has been a white horse on the site for at least three hundred years or so. The earliest mention of it is in "Further Observations on the White Horse and other Antiquities in Berkshire" by the Reverend Wise, published in 1742. The white horse of the title is the Uffington horse, but the author also refers to the Westbury horse. He relates that he was told by local people that it had first been cut in the memory of persons still living or who had recently died, which suggests a date in the late sixteen hundreds