Old England: A Pictorial Museum (page 7/52)

35.—Round Tower of Donoughmore.

“It is easy to understand how the same religion prevailing in neighbouring countries might produce monuments of a similar character; but we find the same in the far east, in lands separated from ours by pathless deserts and wide seas. So it is with those remarkable structures, the Round Towers of Ireland; which were considered ancient even in the twelfth century. Many of these towers are still perfect. They are varied in their construction, and their height is very different; but they all agree in their general external appearance, tapering from the base to a conical cap or roof, which forms the summit. They are almost invarariably found close to an ancient Christian church; which is accounted for by the fact, that the sites of pagan worship were usually chosen by the early missionaries for rearing a holier structure, which should reclaim the people from their superstitious reverence, to found that reverence upon the truths which were purifying the lands of classic paganism. The Round Tower of Donoughmore (Fig. 35) is one of these singular monuments. “The only structures that have been anywhere found similar to the Irish Round Towers are in certain countries of the remote east, and especially in India and Persia. This would seem to indicate a connexion between these countries and Ireland, the probability of which, it has been attempted to show, is corroborated by many other coincidences of language, of religion, and of customs, as well as by the voice of tradition, and the light, though faint and scattered, which is thrown upon the subject by the records of history. The period of the first civilization of Ireland then would, under this view, be placed in the same early age of the world which appears to have witnessed, in those oriental countries, a highly advanced condition of the arts and sciences, as well as flourishing institutions of religious and civil polity, which have also, in a similar manner, decayed and passed away.” (‘Pictorial History of [more...] [$]

36.—Kit’s Coty House near Aylesford, Kent

Kit’s Coty House is a neolithic chambered tomb. It is mentioned in Pepys’ diary, but has suffered damage since this plate was made. [more...] [$]

37.—Kit’s Coty House.

Sheep graze by the neolithic burial tomb while two shepherds wait.

“The high road from Rochester to Maidstone presents several of those rich and varied prospects which so often in England compensate the traveller for the absence of the grander elements of picturesque beauty. Here, indeed, are no mountains shrouded in mist or tipped with partial sunlight; but the bold ridges of chalk are the boundaries of valleys whose fertility displays itself in wood and pasture, in corn-lands and scattered villages. If we look to the north, the broad Medway expands like a vast lake, with an amphitheatre of town and hill-fort, which tell at one and the same time the history of the different warfare of ancient strength and of modern science. When we have ascended the highest point of the ridge, we again see the Medway, an attenuated stream, winding amidst low banks for many a mile. The hill of chalk is of a sufficient height to wear an aspect of sterility; it has some of the bleak features of a mountain-land. The road lies close under the brow of the hill, with a gentle slope to the village of Aylesford – an historical village. Not far from the point where the Aylesford road intersects the high road is the remarkable monument called Kit’s Coty House (Fig. 36). Unlike most monuments of the same high antiquity, it remains, in all probability, as originally constructed. It was described two hundred and fifty years ago by the antiquary Stow, and the description is as nearly exact as any that we could write at the present hour: “I have myself, in company with divers worshipful and learned gentlemen, beheld it in anno 1590, and it is of four flat stones, one of them standing upright in the middle of two others, inclosing the edge sides of the first, and the fourth laid flat across the other three, and is of such height that men may stand on either side the middle stone in time of storm or tempest, safe from wind and rain, being defended with the breadth of the stones, having one at their backs, one on either side, and the fourth over their heads.” In one point the description of Stow does not agree with what we find at the present day: “About a coit’s cast from this monument lieth another great stone, much part thereof in the ground, as fallen down where the same had been affixed.” This stone was half buried in 1773, when Mr. Colebrooke described the monument; it is now wholly covered up. The demand of a few square feet for the growth of corn, in a country with millions of acres of waste land, would not permit its preservation.” (p. 11)

[...]

“The dimensions of Kit’s Coty House are thus given in Grose’s ‘Antiquities:’ “Upright stone on the N. or N. W. side, eight feet high, eight feet broad, two feet thick; estimated weight, eight tons and a half. Upright stone on the S. or S. E. side, eight feet high, seven and a half feet broad, two feet thick; estimated weight, eight tons. Upright stone between these, very irregular; medium dimensions, five feet high, five feet broad, fourteen inches thick; estimated weight, about two tons. Upper stone, very irregular, eleven feet long, eight feet broad, two feet thick; estimated weight, about ten tons seven cwt.

Holland, the first translator of Camden’s ‘Britannia,’ gives a description of Kit’s Coty House, which includes his notion, which was also that of Camden, of the original purpose of this monument. “Catigern, honoured with a stately and solemn funeral, is thought to have been interred near unto Aylesford, where, under the side of a hill, I saw four huge, rude, hard stones erected, two for the sides, one transversal in the middest between them, and the hugest of all, piled and laid over them in manner of the British monument which is called Stonehenge, but not so artificially with mortice and tenants.”

The tradition to which Holland refers is, that a great battle was fought at Aylesford, between the Britons commanded by Catigern, the brother of Vortimer, and the Saxon invaders under Hengist and Horsa: in this battle the Saxons were routed, but Catigern fell. An earlier writer than Holland, Lambarde, in his ‘Perambulation of Kent,’ 1570, also describes this monument in the parish of Aylesford as the tomb of Catigern; “The Britons nevertheless in the mean space followed their victory (as I said) and returning from the chace, erected to the memory of Catigern (as I suppose) that monument of four huge and hard stones, which are yet standing in this [more...] [$]

38.—King’s Coty House

Another picture of King’s Coty’s House; compare Fig. 37. There is also a picture of this in Francis Grose’s Antiquities.

“Antiquaries have puzzled themselves about the name of this Kentish monument. Kit, according to Grose, is an abbreviation of Catigern, and Coty is Coity, coit being a name for a large flat stone; so that Kit’s Coty House is Catigern’s House built with coits. Lambarde expressly says, “now termed of the common people here Citscotehouse.” The familiar name has clearly no more to do with the ancient object of the monument than many other common names applied to edifices belonging to the same remote period. No one thinks, for example, that the name of ‘Long Meg and her daughters,’ of which we have spoken, can be traced back even to the Saxon period. The theory of the earlier antiquaries that the monuments which we now generally call Druidical belong to a period of British history after the Christian era, and commemorate great battles with the Saxons or the Danes, is set at rest by the existence of similar monuments in distant parts of the world; proving pretty satisfactorily that they all had a common origin in some form of religious worship that was widely diffused amongst races of men whose civil history is shrouded in almost utter darkness. Palestine has its houses of coits as well as England. The following description is from the travels of Captains Irby and Mangles: “On the banks of the Jordan, at the foot of the mountain, we observed some very singular, interesting, and certainly very ancient tombs, composed of great rough stones, resembling what is called Kit’s Coty House in Kent. They are built of two long side stones, with one at each end, and a small door in front, mostly facing the north: this door was of stone. All were of rough stones, apparently not hewn, but found in flat fragments, many of which are seen about the spot in huge flakes. Over the whole was laid an immense flat piece, projecting both at the sides and ends. What rendered these tombs the more remarkable was, that the interior was not long enough for a body, being only five feet. This is occasioned by both the front and back stones being considerably within the ends of the side ones. There are about twenty-seven of these tombs, very irregularly situated.” These accomplished travellers call these Oriental monuments tombs, but their interior dimensions would seem to contradict this notion. The cause of these narrow dimensions is clearly pointed out; the front and back stones are considerably within the ends of the side ones. Kit’s Coty House (Figs. 37, 38) has no stone that we can call a front stone; it is open; but the back stone has the same peculiarity as the Palestine monuments; it is placed considerably within the side ones. The side stones lean inwards against the back stone; whilst the large flat stone at top, finding its own level on the irregular surfaces, holds them all firmly together, without the mortice and tenon which are required by the nicer adjustment of the superincumbent stone upon two uprights at Stonehenge. It is evident that the mode of construction thus employed has preserved these stones in their due places for many centuries. The question then arises, for what purpose was so substantial an edifice erected, having a common character with many other monuments in this country, and not without a striking resemblance to others in a land with [more...] [$]

39.—Trevethy Stone

Trevethy Stone, also known as Trethevy Quoit, is a Domen or Cromlech near Liskeard in Cornwall.

The Modern Antiquarian has some photographs.

“At Plas Newydd, in the Isle of Anglesey, are two cromlechs (Fig. 40); and it is believed that these remains confirm the account of Tacitus, and that they were the altars upon which the victims were sacrificed. Near Liskeard, in Cornwall, in the parish of St. Clear, is a cromlech called Trevethy Stone, Trevedi being said to signify in the British language a place of graves (Fig. 39). In the neighbourhood of Lambourn, in Berkshire, are many barrows, and amongst them is found the cromlech called Wayland Smith (Fig. 42). The tradition which Scott has so admirably used in his ‘Kenilworth’ that a supernatural smith here dwelt, who would shoe a [more...] [$]

40.—Cromlech at Plas Newydd, Anglesey

See also Grose’s Antiquities for an older engraving of this neolithic burial tomb. [more...] [$]

41.—Constantine Tolman, Cornwall

I believe this Tolman was destroyed in 1869, although I found no reference to it at the Constantine Village Web site.

“There are remains of the more ancient times of Britain whose uses no antiquarian writers have attempted, by the aid of tradition or imagination, satisfactorily to explain. They are, to a certain extent, works of art; they exhibit evidences of design; but it would appear as if the art worked as an adjunct to nature. The object of the great Druidical monuments, speaking generally, without reference to their superstitious uses, was to impress the mind with something like a feeling of the infinite, by the erection of works of such large proportions that in these after ages we still feel that they are sublime, without paying respect to the associations which once surrounded them. So it would appear that those who once governed the popular mind sought to impart a more than natural grandeur to some grand work of nature, by connecting it with some effort of ingenuity which was under the direction of their rude science. Such are the remains which have been called Tolmen; a Tolman being explained to be an immense mass of rock placed aloft on two subjacent rocks which admit of a free passage between them. Such is the remarkable remain in the parish of Constantine in Cornwall. “It is one vast egg-like stone thirty-three feet in length, eighteen feet in width, and fourteen feet and a half in thickness, placed on the points of two natural rocks, so that a man may creep under it.” (Fig. 41.) There appears to be little doubt that this is a work of art, as far as regards the placing of the huge mass (which is held to weigh seven hundred and fifty tons), upon the points of its natural supporters. If the Constantine Tolman be a work of art, it furnishes [more...] [$]

42.—Wayland Smith’s Cave

In the neighbourhood of Lambourn, in Berkshire, are many barrows, and amongst them is found the cromlech called Wayland Smith. The tradition which Scott has so admirably used in his ‘Kenilworth’ that a supernatural smith here dwelt, who would shoe a traveller’s horse for a “consideration,” is one of the many superstitions that belong to these places [...] [more...] [$]