Kit's Coty

From [a mansion called The Friars] we bent our way towards the hills, over the spot where the Saxons, under their first landing, were routed by the British king Vortimier, after a long and bloody battle, in which Horsa, and Catigern, Vortimer's brother, fighting hand to hand, slew each other.

Tradition says, that Horsa was buried at a place near Chatham, now called Horsted from that circumstance, and that Catigern was interred where he fell. The spot, according to the general opinion, is marked by a monument named Kit's Coty House, composed of four immense stones, which many, however, suppose to have been a druidical altar.

[...] As my reader may possibly object to the word Coity, I beg to remind him that this cromlech is variously designated by different writers: Camden calls it Keith Coty House; Lambarde and Philipott, Citscotehouse; and Kilburne, Kits Cothouse.

The height of the pile is between nine and ten feet, and the upper or largest stone weighs about ten tons and a haf; but, as it is most accurately represented in the print [...] and from its vicinity to the road is too well known to require a minute description, I shall only notice the art shown in the placing of the stones, which, I believe, is not generally observed.

The two blocks which form the sides, stand about six feet apart, and lean a little towards each other, so that they could only fall inwards; but they are secured from doing so by the third set transversely between them; and the three are bound firmly together by the fourth and largest, which is placed on their tops as a roof.

At a short distance below Kit's Coty House, towards the south-west, there are several large stones, which lie in such a confused heap that their number cannot be correctly ascertained; we judged it to be about twenty: and on the hill side, to the north-east by east of Kit's Coty House, there are several more lying near to each other; both these collections seem to have formed circles resembling, on a small scale, that of Stonehenge, and like Kit's Coty House, were reared by the Britons either for a sacrificial altar, or a monumental trophy. Besides those already mentioned there are several large stones scattered about the fields in this neighbourhood, some of which have names given to them.

A somewhat similar story [to that at the Countless Stones] is that Kits Coty House cannot be measured for as fast as the imprudent surveyor takes his measurements he is made to forget them even before he can commit them to paper.

..the building of Kits Coty House is attributed to the magical work of three witches who lived on Blue Bell Hill. Having raised the huge wall-stones, they found themselves unable to lift the capstones, and had to call in the assistance of a fourth member of the sisterhood, by whose help they were enabled to raise the immense stone into the air and lower it gently upon its walls.

It is a persistent tradition that if a personal object is placed upon the capstone, and the donor thereof walks around the monument three times, then the object will disappear; this ritual must be carried out on the night of the full moon. Interested persons have carried out this ritual at intervals right up to this year when the activities of a local investigator were fully reported in the local press.

The insistence that a personal object must be used suggests a substitute sacrifice by which the worshipper buys his own immunity from the Otherworld powers, or, possibly, that the received gift is a reward for favours granted or to be granted, although there is no hint that the ritualist must make a wish when making the circuit.

Another curious story is that if a person climbs on to the capstone, again at full moon, and thrusts his hand into a natural cavity in the stone, he will withdraw five iron nails. The five iron nails (without doubt for a horseshoe) will irrisistably remind readers of the legend attached to Wayland the Smith's Forge, in Berkshire, which is the ruined dolmen of a Long Barrow like Kits Coty House. The story attached to this megalith is that if a traveller places coins upon the capstone he will have his horse shod by an invisible smith. Bearing this story in mind there is thus the further possibility as regards the Kits Coty rituals that they have become confused and separated, and that the object which disappears is really payment for the nails.

— On visiting Kit's Coty House near Maidstone, Kent, a few months ago, I was informed, by a person who apparently knew something of the country round about, of the following common belief by the rustics of the district. It is said by them that a pool of water contained in a hollow on the top of the capstone never dries up, not even in the hottest weather, when it might reasonably be supposed to soon evaporate.

A belief was current in the neighbourhood of these stones—say in Rochester, &c. — some forty-two years ago, that there was on Kit's covering stone a basin of water that, ladle it out as you would, could never be emptied. Two of us, curious boys, mounted the flat roof and found, not one basin, but two, or one cavity divided by a septum.

Commencing on Baconian principles, we carefully examined these, and the murder soon seemed out. The septum had a communicating hole below, and our minds were satisfied with the theory that, not caring to take the trouble of throwing the water over the stone, some one had ladled it from one basin into the other, with the result, of course, of everything remaining in status quo.