page_title: Coldrum Long Barrow
section_title: Early antiquarian descriptions
hierarchical_section_title: Coldrum Long Barrow / Antiquarian and archaeological investigation / Early antiquarian descriptions
caption_attribution_description: English: Coldrum Long Barrow-View looking west at the chamber from below.
context_page_description: The Coldrum Long Barrow, also known as the Coldrum Stones and the Adscombe Stones, is a chambered long barrow located near the village of Trottiscliffe in the south-eastern English county of Kent. Probably constructed in the fourth millennium BCE, during Britain's Early Neolithic period, today it survives only in a state of ruin.
  Archaeologists have established that the monument was built by pastoralist communities shortly after the introduction of agriculture to Britain from continental Europe. Part of an architectural tradition of long barrow building that was widespread across Neolithic Europe, the Coldrum Stones belong to a localised regional variant of barrows produced in the vicinity of the River Medway, now known as the Medway Megaliths. Of these, it is in the best surviving condition. It lies near to both Addington Long Barrow and Chestnuts Long Barrow on the western side of the river. Two further surviving long barrows, Kit's Coty House and Little Kit's Coty House, as well as possible survivals such as the Coffin Stone and White Horse Stone, are located on the Medway's eastern side.
context_section_description: The earliest antiquarian accounts of Coldrum Long Barrow were never published. There are claims that at the start of the 19th century, the Reverend Mark Noble, Rector of Barming, prepared a plan of the site for Gentleman's Magazine, although no copies have been produced to verify this. Between 1842 and 1844, the Reverend Beale Poste authored Druidical Remains at Coldrum, in which he described the monument. This remained unpublished at the time. Associating the site with the druids of Britain's Iron Age, Poste's suggestion was that the name "Coldrum" derived from the linguistically Celtic "Gael-Dun", and that Belgic chiefs were interred there. He further reported that in both 1804 and 1825, skulls had been found at the site. In 1844, an antiquarian named Thomas Wright published a note on the Coldrum Stones and other Medway Megaliths in The Archaeological Journal. Wright had been alerted to their existence by a local vicar, the Reverend Lambert B. Larking, and proceeded to visit them with him. Describing the Coldrums, Wright mentioned "a smaller circle of stones" to the others in the area, with "a subterranean cromlech in the middle". He further added that "it is a tradition of the peasantry that a continuous line of stones ran from Coldrum direct to the well-known monument called Kit's Cotty [sic] House", attributing this belief to various megaliths scattered throughout the landscape.
  In 1857, the antiquarian J. M. Kemble excavated at the site with the help of the Reverend Larking, providing a report of their findings to the Central Committee of the British Archaeological Association. Describing the monument as a stone circle, they asserted that they discovered Anglo-Saxon pottery at the site, and noted that as well as being called the Coldrum Stones, the monument also had the name of the Adscombe Stones, which Kemble believed originated with the Old English word for funeral pile, ad. In August 1863, members of the Archaeological Institute—which was holding its week-long meeting in Rochester—visited the site, guided by the antiquary Charles Roach Smith. That year, the monument was described in a copy of Gentleman's Magazine by Yorkshire antiquary Charles Moore Jessop, who believed it to be a "Celtic" stone circle.
  In 1869, the antiquarian A. L. Lewis first visited the site, and was informed by locals that several years previously a skull had been uncovered from inside or near to the chamber, but that they believed it to be that of a gypsy. A later account elaborated on this, stating that two individuals who excavated in the centre of the chamber without permission discovered a human skeleton, the skull of which was re-buried in the churchyard at Meopham. In an 1878 note published in The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Lewis noted that while many tourists visited Kit's Coty House, "very few goes to or ever hears of a yet more curious collection of stones at Colderham or Coldrum Lodge". He believed that the monument consisted of both a "chamber" and an "oval" of stones, suggesting that they were "two distinct erections". In 1880, the archaeologist Flinders Petrie included the existence of the stones at "Coldreham" in his list of Kentish earthworks; although noting that a previous commentator had described the stones as being in the shape of an oval, he instead described them as forming "a rectilinear enclosure" around the chamber. He then included a small, basic plan of the monument.
  In August 1889, two amateur archaeologists, George Payne and A. A. Arnold, came across the monument, which they noted was known among locals as the "Coldrum Stones" and "Druid Temple"; according to Payne, "the huge stones were so overgrown with brambles and brushwood that they could not be discerned". He returned the next year, noting that the brushwood had since been cut away to reveal the megaliths. In his 1893 book Collectanea Cantiana, Payne noted that although it had first been described in print in 1844, "since that time no one seems to have taken the trouble to properly record them or make a plan", 
caption: View looking west at the chamber from below
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