Coffin Stone

The site today. The topmost stone was placed there recently by the farmer and the actual Coffin Stone is just visible beneath.

The Coffin Stone is a large sarsen stone at the foot of Blue Bell Hill near Aylesford in the English county of Kent.

The stone is one of the Medway megaliths lying 400 m west of the Countless Stones (Little Kit Coty's House). It is a rectangular stone lying flat and measuring 4.4 m long and 2.8 m wide. Two much smaller stones lie nearby.

In 1836 local farmers found 'a sack of bones' underneath the stone. The only record of this is written; the bones are not able to be located and all other evidence is presumed destroyed. It is possibly the remains of a chambered long barrow. Further archaeological excavation was carried out in the summer of 2008 and the evidence did not suggest this, but was inconclusive.

The field is currently being planted as a vineyard and it is planned to allow public access as part of this.

In 1893, the antiquarian George Payne described the monument in his Collectanea Cantiana, noting that locally it was known as both the Coffin Stone and the General's Stone.

See also

• Corpse road