It was possible the horse was even bigger in the past, as Revd E.H.M. Sladen, measuring the horse in 1868 when he was the village's incumbent, claimed the horse was 180 feet high and 165 feet wide. Author Paul Newman describes the horse's appearance as distinctive, "with its docked tail and trotting stance." 1920s poet and essayist E.V. Lucas described the horse as having "a swan-like neck and penetrating eye." Over the years, the shape of the Alton Barnes White Horse has been altered considerably, with its eye becoming larger, its neck becoming more thinned, the shape of its legs being improved and the addition of lips and ears, despite an outline of ears being present in the horse's originally proposed design. Alton Barnes White Horse was cut in 1812 on the instructions of one Robert Pile, a tenant of Manor Farm, located in the village of Alton Barnes. This may be the same Robert Pile who cut the original version of the nearby Pewsey White Horse in 1785, or perhaps his son, given that the Alton Barnes horse was created 27 years later. Selecting the southern slope of Milk Hill for the horse, Pile contacted a journeyman inn sign painter, John Thorne, also known as Jack the Painter, to design and cut the horse, and paid him an advance sum of £20. Pile and Thorne agreed that the white horse would be excavated to a depth of 1 foot (half a metre) and subsequently packed with chalk rubble. Thorne provided Pile with a sketch of the proposed horse, sketched from the Honey Street canal bridge; it resembled Cherhill White Horse and its walking pose, except with ears which were only outlined with chalk. However, although Thorne was supposed to create the horse himself, he discreetly employed another man, Stanton St Bernard resident John Harvey, to do the turf-stripping and digging, and after Harvey had gone about his task and the horse's outline was clearly visible, Thorne ran away, taking his £20 advance with him. According to contrasting accounts, Pile either had to pay Harvey a similar sum to finish the work, or was left to complete the horse himself. Thorne was later caught and hanged for a series of crimes. According to Paul Newman, author of "Lost Gods of Albion", Thorne's Bohemian background and mischievous intent when asked to cut the horse has cemented him as a unique figure within the history of hill figures: "Although one cannot applaud John Thorne for his less than scrupulous attitude towards the duties he had undertaken, he has enlivened the annals of turf-cutting by bringing to this eccentric art a low, Bohemian shiftiness, pleasantly at variance with the solid trustworthiness of the squires and local worthies so often encountered in the histories of these figures."