Further Information
Although badly damaged by ploughing and later vandalism the impressive entrance to the tomb still survives. It consists of three sarsen orthostats supporting a horizontal capstone with a total height of almost 3m. This would have been at one end of a 70m earthern long barrow oriented east-west. A further stone at the site known as the General's Stone or General's Tomb was destroyed in 1867 and may have come from the chamber. 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:
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.
The author George Orwell visited the site on August 21, 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 1854, it was investigated by Thomas Wright who found 'rude pottery' beneath the stones and further Neolithic sherds were recovered from the surrounding field in 1936. Trenching in 1956 located the silted-up ditch surrounding the southern side of the monument and further stones which had been pushed into the ditch when the monument was partially demolished. An excavation in advance of High Speed 1, which runs nearby found the remains of a Neolithic longhouse.
In 1885, Kit's Coty was one of the first sites in Britain to become a Scheduled Ancient Monument and the iron railings that surround it were added a few years later at the suggestion of Augustus Pitt Rivers. It is now in the care of English Heritage.
As only the megalithic portion of the barrow was fenced in by the railings, the long earth barrow has been continually ploughed away since, with uncovered stones dumped in woodland nearby by the farmer and the mound itself, still visible in the mid-twentieth century, now gone.
The site is traditionally known as the burial site of Catigern, brother of Vortimer and son of Vortigern following a battle with the Saxon Horsa in the mid fifth century AD - listed in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as taking place in 455 AD. In 1947, one of the stones from the kerb was removed.
The Countless Stones, also known as Little Kit's Coty House lie 450m to the south at 51°18'57.64"N 0°30'4.93"E. The name "Kits Coty" allegedly means "Tomb in the Forest" according to signs at the site, possibly related to the Ancient British *kaitom, later *keiton, meaning "forest".
Read more about this topic: Kit's Coty House
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