Kit's Coty
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Kit's Coty or Kit's Coty House is the name of the remains of a Neolithic chambered long barrow near Aylesford in the English county of Kent. It is one of the Medway megaliths.
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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 orientated east-west. A further standing stone at the site known as the General's Stone was destroyed in 1867. William Stukeley visited the site in 1772 and was able to sketch 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.
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 1956 located the silted-up ditch surrounding the southern side of the monument.
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. In 1947, one of the stones from the kerb was removed
The Countless Stones, also known as Lower Kit's Coty lie around 450m to the south.