Mystery
The Countless Stones
Twenty stones, officially. Try counting them yourself.
See it clearly
- What's there
- Jumbled heap of large sarsen slabs
- Legend from
- Folk belief recorded 19th–20th century (Evans 1946)
- Tone
- Curious
Count the stones below Kit's Coty. Count again. Kent says you'll never get the same number twice.
A short walk downhill from Kit's Coty lies a tumbled heap of sarsen slabs known as Little Kit's Coty House or the Countless Stones. Local people said that nobody could count them: every attempt gave a different answer. The archaeologist John Evans recorded in 1946 that this belief once applied to all the Medway megaliths, and the same motif is told about other stone monuments across Britain. English Heritage says the heap is the remains of a burial chamber pulled apart around 1690, and that there are in fact twenty stones, some hidden under the larger slabs.