Kit's Coty House or Kit's Coty is a chambered long barrow near the village of Aylesford in the southeastern English county of Kent. Constructed circa 4000 BCE, during the Early Neolithic period of British prehistory, today it survives in a ruined state.

Archaeologists have established that the monument was built by pastoralist communities shortly after the introduction of agriculture to Britain from continental Europe. Although representing part of an architectural tradition of long barrow building that was widespread across Neolithic Europe, Kit's Coty House belongs to a localised regional variant of barrows produced in the vicinity of the River Medway, now known as the Medway Megaliths. Of these, it lies near to both Little Kit's Coty House and the Coffin Stone on the eastern side of the river. Three further surviving long barrows, Addington Long Barrow, Chestnuts Long Barrow, and Coldrum Long Barrow, are located west of the Medway.

They were among the first ancient British remains to be protected by the state, on the advice of General Augustus Pitt-Rivers, the first Inspector of Ancient Monuments. The site is now under the ownership of non-departmental public body English Heritage, and is open to visitors all year round.

In 1659, Thomas Philipot wrote about the site, again describing it as the tomb of Catigern.

The antiquarian John Aubrey made mention of the monument in his unpublished manuscript on British archaeological sites, the Monumenta Britannica. There he included a drawing of the site produced by the classical scholar Thomas Gale. Aubrey then directly cited Philipot's earlier work. There is no direct evidence that Aubrey visited the site but Ashbee thought it "inconceivable that he did not" given that he made frequent visits to Kent, using a road which would have taken him very close to Kit's Coty House.

William Stukeley visited the site in 1722 and was able to sketch the site whilst it was still largely intact. Before this, Samuel Pepys also saw it and wrote:

Stukeley included four engravings of Kit's Coty House in his two volumes of Itinerarium Curiosum. A 1722 print of the site showed the chamber, mound, and the General's Tombstone.

In c.1783, James Douglas set one of his workmen to dig on the western side of the monument, and produced a watercolour painting illustrating the scene.

In 1880, the archaeologist Flinders Petrie included the stones at Addington in his list of Kentish earthworks. In 1893, the antiquarian George Payne mentioned the monument in his Collectanea Cantiana, describing it as a "fallen cromlech" and noting that there were various other megaliths scattered in the vicinity, suggesting that these were part of the monument of another like it, since destroyed.

In his 1924 publication dealing with Kent, the archaeologist O. G. S. Crawford, then working as the archaeological officer for the Ordnance Survey, listed Kit's Coty House alongside the other Medway Megaliths and reprinted one of Stukeley's engravings of it.

The author George Orwell visited the site on 21 August 1938, as detailed in his domestic diary of that date. He describes it as "a druidical altar or something of the kind. ... The stones are on top of a high hill & it appears they belong to quite another part of the country." The stones are actually well down the slope of Blue Bell Hill, 1.32 km to the north.

In January 1981, Kent Archaeological Rescue Unit carried out a survey of the site.

Management by English Heritage

Ashbee suggested that Kit's Coty House was "the best known" of the Medway Megaliths, while Champion thought it "perhaps the best-known monument in Kent".

In 2005, Philp and Dutto referred to Kit's Coty as an "important monument" that was "amongst the best known in Britain".

References

Footnotes

Bibliography

  • Photo and location map
  • Pictures and personal experiences of Kit's Coty House at The Modern Antiquarian
  • The tomb's association with Catigern
  • Further research and history: English Heritage