Kits Coty - Bluebell Hill, Maidstone, kent. UK
Posted by: 
dave-harris
N 51° 19.195 E 000° 30.187
31U E 326014 N 5688362
The Grave of Catigern. A neolithic burial chamber which has the same name from the local village
Waymark Code: WMAQB9
Location: South East England, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 02/12/2011
Views: 7
We have a very vague idea of how or where Vortigern died, but his sons's graves are more known to us. Catigern's grave is securely attached to Kent.
A well-known site in the south-east of England, Kit's Coty House is a neolithic chambered tomb. Kit's Coty House stands in a field to the west (you can't see it from the road) of the A 229 from Maidstone to Rochester. A footpath, app. 0.25 miles (0.5 km) long, leads towards it. The tallest stone of which is 8 feet (2.4 metres) high and the capstone 4 by 2.7 metres, which was once covered by an earthen mound of 180 feet (55 metres) long, as aerial pfotographs have shown. Side ditches were once up to 3.8 metres deep. This site was already famous in the seventeeth century. The diarist Samuel Pepys described it as:
"Three great stones standing upright and a great round one lying on them, of great bigness, although not so big as those on Salisbury Plain. But certainly it is a thing of great antiquity, and I am mightily glad to see it."
Unfortunately not all people felt this way. A large stone shown on a sketch by Stukely in 1722 and known as 'the General's Tomb', was blown up in 1867. The large mound, also visible on that sketch, has also all but vanished.
Some call it simply Kit's Coty, because 'coty' means the same as 'house'. The story explaining the name tells us that Kit is Catigern, who, together with his brother Vortimer fought Hengist and his brother Horsa here around 455, which is recorded both in the Historia Brittonum as well as in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:.
Type: Dolmen
Parking: N 51° 19.040 E 000° 30.492
Number: 4.00
Size:
he tallest stone of which is 8 feet (2.4 metres) high and the capstone 4 by 2.7 metres
Source:
http://www.vortigernstudies.org.uk/artgra/kitcoit.htm
Purpose: Not listed
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