Kit's Coty House
Well, we did tell you in our reel that we'd post about this next year!
Our first post of 2026 is inspired by Danny Robins's podcast Uncanny, the episode Road Ghosts. They visited Kit's Coty House for this episode which reminded us that this was on our Phantom Bucket List of Kent and so a few days after the episode aired we went off and visited the site for ourselves. In fact, we rounded up all the little sites we've been meaning to do this whole year and never got round to. St Augustine's Cross and Conduit House were finally knocked off the list, as was Faversham Stone Chapel. It has taken us 9 months to get there, but get there we did.
Now no one really knows why this Long Barrow is called Kit's Coty, it is only guessed at, but it is assumed that the house bit comes from the fact it looks a little bit like a house. It's a Neolithic burial chamber though and dates all the way back to 4000BCE.
Obviously Long Barrows are a fairly common thing across the UK, we've been to a fair few now and most recently saw Nympsfield Long Barrow in Gloucester. But this Chambered Long Barrow is suspected to be part of something bigger. Now known as the Medway Megaliths, Kit's Coty House is only one of the five surviving Long Barrows that make up this cult of barrows. All built around the River Medway, these Long Barrows come from the Neolithic architectural movement which ended in 'bulk-burying' their dead in this way as it was quite the preference those days. It seems that as the settlements moved from from hunter-gatherer and moved to farming they opted for a more permanent way to honour their dead. The others on the East side of the river is Little Kit's Coty House and the Coffin Stone which are also both quite hard to get to, and then on the western side you have Addington Long Barrow, Chestnuts Long Barrow, and Coldrum Long Barrow.
It is suspected that the reason why our little county of Kent has so many of these, and in quite close proximity, is that it was the preferred location for Neolithic settlements due to its vast land for agriculture and it was quite the woodland area back then. Not only that, but Medway is fairly close to the Thames and really its a good spot, we also have good mud down here and if you doubt that please note that all the areas where these Barrows are located are either crop fields or vineyards now. So with that in mind you can look at it two ways, either this area in Kent was home to one large settlement who had so many dead they had to create multiple chambers OR there were multiple settlements and they each built their own. Now the boffins who have looked into these further say that back before they became the ruins we see now, the Long Barrows were quite grand. So if you go with the latter statement of multiple settlements, then these could have been a competition of grand burial sites between settlements, or simply the Kent Neoliths were much grander in general. But we're just musing now, let's move on before we get carried away. In reality it isn't known whether they were built at the same time, if they were all for the same thing, or if there was a succession to the sites.
Archaeologists reckon that these megaliths may have been altered over time, but that they were possibly inspired by the Cotswold-Severn group which is the older equivalent to our South-eastern megalithic group. What remains of Kit's Coty House is simply three Sarsen stones with a cap stone, resembling a small house. But Timothy Champion suggests that what we see now gives a rough idea of the scale of the original sculpture as the front part of the chamber is missing and it was suspected that there was also a façade present which is also gone. It would have also been on a mound, like the others we've been to elsewhere, hence the entrance to a chamber below, but over time the mound has been levelled as the field has been ploughed and so the area is pretty much flat now.
Of course the stones that remain at the site are but a tiny remnant of what once was. We've already mentioned that there are stones missing, but the site was much wider and grander than the small area left. There was even another megalith at the western end of Kit's Coty called 'The General's Tombstone' but it was destroyed in 1867, why it gained this nickname we don't know, but it was interesting. What this megalith's purpose was we dont know, but it is assumed that it was part of the Kit's Coty structure and not one of its own.
Hercules Ayleway wrote to his friend William Stukeley (they were both antiquarians which is why the knowledge of this exchange remains) in 1722 of the monuments erected in memory of the two kings of Kent who died in battle. These were Kit's Coty House and The White Horse Stone and it was the locals who believed that this was their purpose. We'll explore this a bit more in our first Folklore Friday, but William Camden wrote in Britannia (1586) that it was the tomb of Prince Catigern, the 5th century British prince who died in the Battle of Aylesford in 455 against brothers Hengist and Horsa who were Kings of Thanet. It was then mentioned again as Catigern's tomb in 1659 when Thomas Philipot wrote about the site, but whether or not any evidence went behind this statement or it was just a rehash of Camden's words is unknown. To add to this though, John Aubrey who was a regular visitor to Kent wrote about the site and he cited Philipot directly, it is likely he would have visited the site himself and had reason to cite the other man. Regardless, this tale of Catigern's resting place has been the most upheld one throughout history.
However, on the other hand we have a more supernatural explanation for how KCH came to be. Another local folk tale has it that there were three witches who lived on Bluebell Hill and they erected the stones for witchcraft and a fourth was responsible for the capstone. This tale circulated in about 1946 so was possibly a story crafted in Wartime for the young children who lived nearby as we've noticed supernatural tales seemed to spike again following the wars. But this may have either inspired or been inspired by the Druids and other Pagan religions who use the Medway Megaliths for ceremonies and the like. Regardless, the Witches of Kit's Coty House went on to inspire a play.
Later on it was compared to Stonehenge and so if you want to launch yourself into the lore of King Arthur, perhaps it is the burial place for the once and future king? This is of course wishful thinking but worth throwing into the ring as Stonehenge has its own Arthurian connections, but the stones are all of similar placements and it is known as the kings grave, perhaps just a different king.
George Orwell, who's grave we visited in December, has also visited KCH. On the 21st August 1938 he wrote in his diary of the visit and it is interesting to us to learn how this place as knitted together another thread of our research/adventures. We didn't know he'd visited and it was an area of interest to him until after we had visited both KCH and Orwell's grave, so to have the two come together seems mystical to us.
Orwell isn't the only author to visit the site though. Clive King's Stig of the Dump is believed to use KCH as the setting. Ren used it as her first Literary Corner of the Internet post yesterday. The story follows a boy who befriends a Caveman who lives in a dump and by the end of the book they experience a time slip back to the caveman's time and build Kit's Coty House.
So we turn to the origins of the name. It is assumed that Kits Coty means Tomb in the Forest as Kits may be loosely translated from Ancient British and the word of kaitom which is forest. Alternatively it could be translated from the Celtic 'ked coerd' which turns it into the same phrase. As this area was mostly forest back in this period this would make sense, but we can't help but feel perhaps this translation is wishful thinking a bit, especially when you start to learn the folklore surrounding the area. If you turn back to the lore that KCH is the burial tomb of Catigern, it would have been known as Catigern's Coity House which translates to Catigern's Stone House. Over the years Catigern has been changed to Kit, Coity to Coty, and thus we've ended up at Kit's Coty House. Some locals who hold the knowledge of their ancestors reckon that the name came from a nickname. It's simply that a man named Kit used to shelter within the stones during awful weather.
But with that we turn to what you are all more interested in, ghosts. While searching the internet we haven't come across the usual 'this site is haunted', in fact it redirects to Bluebell Hill which is notorious for ghostly encounters. However, Danny Robins has brought it to all of our attention that this site holds something too, and while we won't rip off Uncanny and talk about what has been uncovered in depth, we will direct you to listen to the episode 'Roadside Ghosts' as that'll tell you more about it.
After you've sorted out the parking debacle and the bit of muddy hill walking and getting your phone maps to actually work, this is quite a nice site to visit. Once you've managed to get past these hurdles it is a peaceful area full of the most fascinating history and there is folklore for miles. We can't wait to delve into it with you as we go on to explore more folklore this year.
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