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Standing Stone / Menhir
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I have posted a map to show a nice way of walking round the different monuments in this area, starting with the (Upper) White Horse Stone. It must have been awful to have been here when the Eurostar link was being built, but now, the dust has settled, and wild flowers have grown over the banks around the tunnel, from which the occasional train whizzes forth.
Over the hill we came, across the bridge over the railway line, and then up a wooded path between two fields, and to our left we saw the dark eyes and flaring nostrils of the great, oblong sarsen stone, that was nicknamed 'the Western Sphynx', but is probably the back-stone of a Neolithic burial chamber. Just near it are some other pieces of sarsen stone – other parts of this burial chamber, maybe.
Two lost monuments were nearby, both destroyed by 19th century farmers to make way for their ploughs: 'Smythe's Dolmen' was in the field that you see when you stand under the trees, looking at the White Horse Stone. The other lost stone(s), the Lower White Horse Stone or 'Kentish Standard Stone' was in the field behind you. Both may once have been burial chambers too: the former contained two human skeletons and the skull of a mole.
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Posted by Anthony Adolph
22nd June 2010ce
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