Mystery · Ashbury · Famous
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A coin on the stone, and new shoes by morning.
See it clearly
Reached only on foot along the Ridgeway from the White Horse Hill car park; free. Check before you go.
Tie up your horse. Leave a coin on the stone. Walk away, and don't look back.
In a ring of beech trees beside the Ridgeway stands a Neolithic long barrow, fronted by great sarsen stones. A Saxon charter of 955 already calls it 'Weland's Smithy', after the smith of Germanic legend. The local story says that if you left your horse tied up here overnight with a small coin, Wayland the invisible elvish smith would shoe it while you were away. In the morning the coin would be gone and the horse newly shod. Nobody ever saw the smith at work.