page_title: White Horse Stone
section_title: Upper White Horse Stone
hierarchical_section_title: White Horse Stone / Features / Upper White Horse Stone
caption_attribution_description: English: The White Horse Stone, a megalith on Blue Bell Hill, Kent, England, that was saved from the encroachment of a telephone company by a group of local neo-pagans.
context_page_description: The White Horse Stone is a name given to two separate sarsen megaliths on the slopes of Blue Bell Hill, near the village of Aylesford in the south-eastern English county of Kent. The Lower White Horse Stone was destroyed prior to 1834, at which time the surviving Upper White Horse Stone took on its name and folkloric associations. Various archaeologists have suggested—although not proven—that the stones were each part of chambered long barrows constructed in the fourth millennium BCE, during Britain's Early Neolithic period.
  If the White Horse Stones were originally components of chambered long barrows, then they would have been erected by pastoralist communities shortly after the introduction of agriculture to Britain from continental Europe. Long-barrow building was an architectural tradition widespread across Neolithic Europe although comprised various localised regional variants; one of these was in the vicinity of the River Medway, examples of which are now known as the Medway Megaliths.
context_section_description: The Upper White Horse Stone (grid reference TQ753603) is 2.9 metres (9.5 ft) in length, 1.65 metres (5.4 ft) in height, and about 0.6 metres (2.0 ft) thick. It is sarsen. The White Horse Stone is situated in "a narrow strip of woodland", known as Westfield Wood, which is adjacent to the Pilgrim's Way. The megalith lies to the east of the A229 dual carriageway, and can be reached by going behind the nearby petrol garage and following the Pilgrim's Way. 
  The Upper White Horse Stone took its name from the destroyed Lower White Horse Stone; that it had taken on this name was first noted in print in 1927. Reflecting this, Evans called it the "Successor White Horse Stone". He believed that at one end it had the "crude outline of a face caused by the natural configuration of the rock". It is scheduled under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979. 
  It is possible that the Upper White Horse Stone was once part of a chambered long barrow that has otherwise been destroyed. Philp and Dutto, however, noted that its identification as part of a long barrow was "uncertain". In supporting this possibility, Evans noted that upright stone resembled a "chamber wallstone" akin to those at Coldrum and Kit's Coty House. However, there is no visual trace of any earthen mound having existed next to the monolith. Nine smaller stones extend westward from the White Horse Stone for about ten metres. It is possible that these stones were not placed there in the Early Neolithic but were moved there at a later date by local farmers who found them in their fields.
caption: The White Horse Stone located in a small stretch of woodland
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