The cavalry of the Rohirrim look like a reimagining of the old Kingdom of Mercia, which was central and western England before Alfred the Great. (I got this idea from one of Tom Shippey's books, either Author of the Century or Road to Middle Earth ... or both. Been a few years since I read them). The old English language that Tolkien used as the model for the language of Rohan is related to the old English from that region.
The symbol of the white horse on a green field (on the banner of the Rohirrim) is, per Shippey, founded on a real world place in Uffington, which is on the southwestern marches of Mercia (current Oxfordshire) where it runs into Wessex (which was for a while included in Mercia). In Shippey's The Road to Middle-earth his analysis is that the emblem of the King's banner was inspired by the Uffington White Horse.
In LoTR, Tolkien did a great job of providing a world with depth. In Middle Earth, you ran across things of great antiquity ... and there are stories behind them. (Example? The two statues at Argonath; the seat at Amon Hen). In Tolkien's reality (England) there were things of great antiquity (Stonehenge, that White Horse, various standing stones, druidic/faerie rings of trees) all of which had stories behind them -- some real and some imagined.
From a story teller's perspective, a banner with a white horse would be the symbol of horse people. Not much of a stretch to render the whole kingdom as the home of great horsemen.
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