Folklore Friday: The Feuding Kings of Kent

 

Welcome to our very first Folklore Friday! The intention of this is to simply share with you the interesting snippets of folklore we have encountered during our research or time in these places. 

Our Lauren's special interests within all her studies and various diplomas is folklore and mythology so being able to delve into this on a deeper level is amazing. It is good for her and after the year we've all had in 2025 we want to try and bring as much good into the new year as we can.

Our first FF looks into the local folklore regarding Kit's Coty House which we visited late last year and posted about a few weeks ago.

Those who love the history of Britain will be aware of the Saxon mercenaries Hengist and Horsa. They were brothers who landed on our shores in Ebbsfleet in 449 after King Vortigern had requested them. They were rewarded for their help in driving out the Picts and Scots by being given the Isle of Thanet and thus they became kings of this little bit of Medway.

In 455 the brothers found themselves against King Vortigern as the deal had gone badly. The Battle of Aylesford took the lives of both Horsa and Vortigern's brother Catigern and so the two kings were buried nearby. It was recorded that Catigern was buried at Kit's Coty House and Horsa at the White Horse Stone. In fact locals go so far as to say that this is where KCH gets its name from, Catigern's Stone House in modern English having been converted from coits meaning stone and a nickname of Catigern becoming Kit. This can be found in Lambarde's work as he wrote the first history of Kent and it is believed that this account is what inspired local folklore. 

The battle is chronicled in both the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Historia Brittonum but neither source confirmed who won the battle. The fact that Hengist went on to become King of Kent and conquered it with help of his son who went ahead and had 4 battles with the Britons and lost only 1 leans to the opinion that the Saxon was the victor.

Now a slightly different turn of events is mentioned in Geoffrey of Monmouth's writings where Thanet was given to Hengist as dowry for Vortigern's hand in marriage. This soured somewhere along the line and thus the German mercenaries fought the Britons and we ended up at the above anyway.

We find the story of Hengist and Horsa quite fascinating and so will look into the brothers some other time in full once we visit the sites where they are supposedly buried (Hengist is in Dorset), but we just wanted to share with you the pocket of lore we found at Kit's Coty House and why the site is so famous, it is suspected to house royalty!

We know that this is only a short post and we did briefly cover it before, but it became a gateway into further research which we will share with you later down the line and ultimately it is pretty fascinating that this has become ingrained into the area. Especially as when you think about it Geoffrey's works were not always fact and certainly dabbled in fiction with things he learnt from the era, take King Arthur, we readily disprove a fair amount we've learnt from him on that matter, could the Kings of Kent's burials be another fabrication? We'll let you decide.