The White Horse of Uffington: reading answers and analysis
England's hill figures are cut by removing turf to expose white chalk, and most vanish unless they are regularly scoured. The Uffington White Horse, near the Ridgeway and Bronze Age burial mounds, was dated by OSL testing of soil to 1400-600 BCE, much older than the coin-based guess. Theories of its meaning range from tribal emblem to the goddess Epona or Rhiannon.
Questions 1-13 · 13 marks · 2 question blocks
Where the answers sit
TRUE / FALSE / NOT GIVEN (1-8) covers the first three paragraphs. The notes (9-13) run from the Horse's location through its dating to the goddess theories, in passage order.
Questions 1-8
Two FALSEs are easy to misjudge: historians still disagree about the Long Man, and figures were made by removing grass to reveal chalk, not by adding chalk. The NOT GIVENs ask whether horses are the most common shape and why the Uffington Horse is famous. The passage lists shapes without counting them and never gives its size as the reason.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | TRUE | — |
| 2 | NOT GIVEN | — |
| 3 | TRUE | — |
| 4 | FALSE | — |
| 5 | FALSE | — |
| 6 | TRUE | — |
| 7 | TRUE | — |
| 8 | NOT GIVEN | — |
Questions 9-13
The notes follow three headings. For location, you need the name of the old track (with a capital). For dating, you need what the 1070s mention appeared in, and what was tested in 1995. For meaning, you need what Epona was linked to besides horses, and the Welsh goddess's name.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 9 | Ridgeway | — |
| 10 | documents | — |
| 11 | soil | — |
| 12 | fertility | — |
| 13 | Rhiannon | — |
The questions most people get wrong
FALSE. The method was to remove the grass to reveal the white chalk underneath, not to put chalk on the hill.
TRUE. It was re-dated and shown to be even older than its earlier Iron Age date, so the old estimate was wrong.
The OSL test used soil from layers of the horse's body, so the answer is 'soil'. 'Coins' was the older method, based on style.
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The full Cambridge 16 Test 2 reading paper: all three passages, 60 minutes, marked the second you finish with a review of every answer. Already done it? Take it again and see if the same traps still get you.
Cambridge IELTS 16, Test 2, Reading Passage 1. The passage name belongs to Cambridge University Press. No passage text or question wording is reproduced on this page. The answers are published for self-marking, and the analysis is our own.