Big bird not over the hill

HISTORIC ENGLAND has announced the listing of one of the more unusual examples among the Wiltshire Downs’ striking array of chalk hill figures. The Bulford Kiwi, 420ft high, with a 150ft-long beak, lies on the escarpment of Beacon Hill above Salisbury Plain and can be seen from Stonehenge, but is little known. It was carved by New Zealand soldiers stationed nearby towards the end of the First World War, to commemorate the sacrifices made by their fellow countrymen who perished at the Battle of Messines in June 1917.

A second monument, the archaeological remains of a scale model of the battlefield created by the New Zealand Rifle Brigade and known as the Terrain Model of Messines, in Cannock Chase, Staffordshire, has also been scheduled. A former tourist attraction in the immediate decades after the war until it fell into neglect, it was recently excavated and there are plans to incorporate the site within a local heritage trail. Jack Watkins