Blue Bell Hill

There were ruins of a Roman temple on Blue Bell Hill, but the Romans were not the first people to call the hill their home, as the ancient burial chambers of Kits Coty and Coldrum testify. In 455 the hillside rang with the cries of battle as Vortimer, King of the Britons, fought the Saxons who were led by the mercenaries Hengist and Horsa. We are told that the battle raged on all day and in the final reckoning Vortimer lay dead, as did Horsa. It is reported that Vortimer was buried somewhere on the hill near to Kits Coty House and that at certain times the cries of battle can still be heard. Also nearby is the King-making or White Horse Stone, an important and ancient site that marked the spot where the Kings of Kent were crowned, so legend would have it.

 

We have a very vague idea of how or where Vortigern died, but his sons's graves are more known to us.

Catigern's grave is securely attached to Kent.

A well-known site in the south-east of England, Kit's Coty House is a neolithic chambered tomb. Kit's Coty House stands in a field to the west (you can't see it from the road) of the A 229 from Maidstone to Rochester. A footpath, app. 0.25 miles (0.5 km) long, leads towards it. The tallest stone of which is 8 feet (2.4 metres) high and the capstone 4 by 2.7 metres, which was once covered by an earthen mound of 180 feet (55 metres) long, as aerial pfotographs have shown. Side ditches were once up to 3.8 metres deep. This site was already famous in the seventeeth century. The diarist Samuel Pepys described it as:

"Three great stones standing upright and a great round one lying on them, of great bigness, although not so big as those on Salisbury Plain. But certainly it is a thing of great antiquity, and I am mightily glad to see it."
Unfortunately not all people felt this way. A large stone shown on a sketch by Stukely in 1722 and known as 'the General's Tomb', was blown up in 1867. The large mound, also visible on that sketch, has also all but vanished.