Heavy Horses

Ever since I was a horse-crazy girl, I loved the Heavy Horse breeds.  They're the baby rhinos of the horse world (except calmer). 

You mostly see them pulling things, and I didn't know people rode them, but recently I saw this, which I thought was really beautiful:

Then I also came across this statue, "The Heavy Horse", by Scottish sculptor Andy Scott. The breed is Clydesdale, originally bred in Scotland.

From Scott's site: the horse is located "beside the M8 motorway between Glasgow and Edinburgh, it stands 4.5 metres tall at the head and is made of galvanised steel round bars."

And then, this isn't heavy horse, but a horse cut into the turf of a chalk hillside: "The Vale of the White Horse" (c. 1939), another watercolor from Eric Ravilious. 

According to the Tate, "This appears to be the White Horse on White Horse Hill, Uffington, Berkshire." 

More on the Uffington Horse from the wonderful graphic series  "Archaeological Oddities" found on the blog Prehistories: Adventures in Time and Space: