THE great white carvings—mostly horses, but also rude men, memorial crosses, Edward VII’s ceremonial crown and a kiwi carved by disgruntled New Zealand soldiers awaiting repatriation—startling amid a rolling, pale-green land-scape glimpsed from a train or car window, signal that you are in chalk country, now globally one of the rarest geologies. The South of England, however, has lots of it.
Swathes of chalk downland, much evocatively painted by Eric Ravilious, stretch in
