Letters
It is anticipated that approximately £100 plus will be available from the fund and any interested person should write a suitable letter of application giving details of themselves together with relevant information concerning the research envisaged. Please bring this fund to the notice of your tutors and lecturers concerned with archaeology/history as we are anxious that the money available should be used fully.
WIRG has recently acquired a section of railings from St Paul's Cathedral and research into the construction etc. is an example of a subject that is eligible for a grant.
Applications should be sent to me not later than 31st March 2000 so that I can pass them to the Panel for consideration.
Sheila Broomfield From: dixon, stephen
The service comprises an explanatory front-end and three query tools: a simple query tool, advanced query tool and a map graphical query tool.
It is hoped CityArk will aid all potential historical researchers into Medway and Kent history.
Stephen M Dixon Borough Archivist Members may like to read Dr Ashbee's letter in conjunction with his article on 'Coldrum Revisited and Reviewed' in the latest volume of Archaeologia Cantiana.
Dear Editor, Long Barrows and Sarsen Stones Kent's Medway megaliths, the stone-chambered, stone- surrounded, long barrows, slighted during the Middle Ages, are a concentration of the most grandiose of their kind. Their lofty chambers and considerable long mounds are almost unmatched in Britain. Their affinities are with the mainland European series which fringes the vast LBK (Linear Pottery) territory. They can be seen as surrogate long houses designed for rites involving human remains and are associated with the emergence of Neolithic subsistence agriculture.
Until about 1950, they were much as they had been seen by William Stukeley in the eighteenth century. The long barrow appended to Kit's Coty House stood about 3ft in height, with its ditches clearly defined, although the stone chamber remnant was protected by the nineteenth century iron railings. Despite trees, sense could be made of the Lower Kit's Coty House chamber and the great Coffin Stone was the remains of the principal of the series.
At Great Tottington the spread of sarsen stones was perhaps an ingathering for an industry that failed.
Various stones, such as around the spring, may be from the Coffin Stone long barrow.
Ronald Jessup's list of Ancient Monuments in Kent (Arch.Cant., 61(1948), 122-5) specified only Kit's Coty House, the Lower Kit's Coty House and the White Horse Stone on the eastern side of the Medway, as have subsequent lists. The Kit's Coty House long barrow, the Coffin Stone and the remarkable Great Tottington sarsen stone spread were excluded. Down the years the Kit's Coty House long barrow has been all but obliterated and recently the railings and stones vandalised. Another large sarsen stone, dragged out by modern agricultural machinery, now lies on the Coffin Stone and all trace of the erstwhile long barrow has been removed by deep ploughing. Parts of Tottington's sarsen stone spread, I have been told, are being moved.
It is manifest, as fieldwork a few years ago revealed, that the situation regarding the various sites on the lower slopes of Blue Bell Hill is far from satisfactory. With this in mind, a correspondence was initiated with English Heritage, the successor body to the scholarly Ancient Monuments Inspectorate of the Ministry of Works. In the event, and only after an overture to the principal, an answer emerged. At Kit's Coty House, despite the near- obliterated long barrow, the damaged railings and vandalised stones, they see no significant problems. The Coffin Stone, despite the accumulated, if tenuous, evidence, to which they come rather late in the day, is thought of as a doubtful site and thus not worthy of protection. As to Tottington's sarsen stones, it is claimed that they do not meet the criteria for classification as ancient monuments, for they might have resulted from natural processes! These English Heritage arguments are, if anything, a"