Qualla: Smythe's Megalith

Smythe's Megalith: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Simon Burchell, CC BY-SA 4.0. On a summer day in 1822, the ploughs at Warren Farm on the lower slopes of Blue Bell Hill kept striking something hard under the soil. The labourers cleared the topsoil and found three large sarsen stones - dense, hard, grey, distinctive. The farm's owner sent to Maidstone for two antiquarians who might know what these were. The men who came down, Clement Smythe and Thomas Charles, recognised at once that the stones resembled the chamber of Kit's Coty House, the famous Neolithic dolmen visible from miles away on the ridge above. They drew the chamber. They began to interpret it. By the time they came back the following day, the labourers had already pulled the stones apart with horses and scattered most of the human bones they had found.

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Image: Simon Burchell | CC BY-SA 4.0

Smythe's Megalith: What Was Lost

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tony Grist, CC0. Smythe's Megalith - sometimes called the Warren Farm Chamber - was a chambered long barrow built in the 4th millennium BCE during Britain's Early Neolithic period. The visible chamber consisted of four sarsen stones. The northern stone measured seven feet by four by one. The sout...

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Image: Tony Grist | CC0

Smythe's Megalith: The People Inside

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ethan Doyle White, CC BY-SA 3.0. Beneath the four chamber stones, the workmen found a flat slab measuring four feet by three. On it lay human remains, aligned east to west. The workmen present on the second day - Smythe was not there - threw most of the bones to the side of the trench. Charles managed to recover...

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Image: Ethan Doyle White | CC BY-SA 3.0

Smythe's Megalith: The Antiquarians

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ethan Doyle White, CC BY-SA 3.0. Clement Taylor Smythe was a Maidstone antiquarian and historian. Thomas Charles was a doctor in the town who had founded a museum at Chillington House - the building that, decades later, would become Maidstone Museum proper. They had been called in by George Fowle of Cobtree Mano...

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Image: Ethan Doyle White | CC BY-SA 3.0

Smythe's Megalith: Why It Was Buried

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ethan Doyle White, CC BY-SA 3.0. Across the Medway valley, the Early Neolithic builders had erected a small cluster of similar chambered tombs - now known collectively as the Medway Megaliths. Smythe's Megalith was part of the eastern group, sharing the hillside with Kit's Coty House, Little Kit's Coty House, th...

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Image: Ethan Doyle White | CC BY-SA 3.0

Smythe's Megalith: What Remains

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ethan Doyle White, CC BY-SA 3.0. Nothing of Smythe's Megalith is visible at the site today. The field where it was found lies east of the A229 dual carriageway, not publicly accessible. In the 1920s the archaeologist O.G.S. Crawford used the Maidstone Museum archives to identify the probable location and include...

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Image: Ethan Doyle White | CC BY-SA 3.0