More than 100 years after the first thorough archaeological ‘dig’ at Coldrum Longbarrow, a prehistoric tomb at Trottiscliffe, Kent, images from 17 glass plate negatives recording the excavations and the human bones they unearthed have been conserved and scanned by Kent Archaeological Society volunteers.
Said Denis Anstey, head of IT for the society’s Visual Records Group: ‘The pictures were taken in 1910 and are among thousands of images of Kent dating from the early 18th century to the late 20th century that the KAS has collected since it was founded in 1857.
Some of them are now very delicate and they will inevitably continue to deteriorate with time, so it is very important that we keep them in digital format. This will enable us to offer the images to local historians, researchers and publishers long after the originals become too fragile to copy’.
Coldrum Longbarrow, probably built in the 40th century BC, is the best-preserved of the group of Early Neolithic structures near Maidstone known as the Medway Megaliths – the earliest prehistoric monuments surviving in Britain. When first explored, Coldrum was described as ‘a miniature Stonehenge’, as it was wrongly assumed that its stones had originally been set out in a circle - similar to the rings of stones that form the awe-inspiring World Heritage Site on Salisbury Plain.
Eventually it was realized that Coldrum’s stones marked a rectangular mound covering a communal grave. However Coldrum and Stonehenge have one thing in common; their builders used massive sarsen sandstone boulders, found in many places between Wiltshire and Kent. Coldrum, though, is more than 1,000 years older than Stonehenge.
The first prehistoric ‘finds’ at Coldrum were pot fragments, unearthed in 1856. Then, eight years later, along came Benjamin Harrison and Flinders Petrie of the Kent Archaeological Society.
Harrison was born in Ightham in 1837. He spent his entire adult life searching for evidence of Kent’s early inhabitants, after an inspirational visit to one of the Medway Megaliths, Kits Coty, while a pupil at the British School at Platt, near Sevenoaks. Petrie, born in 1853 in Charlton (then in Kent, now part of the Royal Borough of Greenwich) was an eminent Egyptologist and archaeologist, whose many achievements included introducing, in 1877, the numbering sequence for Stonehenge’s stones that is still used today.
Together Harrison and Petrie measured and sketched Coldrum, paving the way for a more ambitious investigation in 1910 by Francis James Bennett of West Malling, a Fellow of the Geological Society of London. ‘No sooner had I put my fork in,’ wrote Bennett, ‘that I at once turned up some human bones, under only a few inches of soil’. He postponed further work for four months until his niece and her husband (a Mrs and Mr Lindsay) could help him keep and record his finds.
They found human bones and a skull containing teeth – no doubt to the delight of Mr Lindsay, a dental expert and craniologist. In August Edwin W Filkins, an architect who lived at Claphall, Gravesend, joined Bennett and together they completed the excavation. Some of the five skulls and bones from an estimated 22 adults and children were handed over to Sir Arthur Keith, anatomist and anthropologist, of the Royal College of Surgeons; others were donated to Maidstone Museum. In 1913 Bennett published his report and photographs of the ‘dig’ in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. Filkins made plans and a model of Coldrum and presented them to Maidstone Museum. More human bones were found in 1922.
On July 10 1926 the National Trust bought Coldrum Longbarrow and dedicated it to the memory of Ben Harrison, its first archaeologist and historian. He first went there in 1864 and studied it for the next 57 years. He died in 1921, aged 83, having lived all his life in Ightham, where he ran a village store for 54 years and, above the shop, had a museum of his collection of local ‘finds’.
Coldrum is one of the Druid movement’s ‘sacred places’ and is described on http://druidnetwork.org as a ‘rare gem in Kent’s spiritual
crown’.
Pictured at the ceremony at Coldrum Longbarrow during the dedication ceremony in July 1926 are, from the left, Lord Avebury (whose father was a friend of Benjamin Harrison for more than 40 years), Rev Morgan Gilbert (a friend of Benjamin Harrison for more than 50 years), Sir Arthur Keith (Royal College of Surgeons) and Sir Edgar Bonham Carter of the National Trust. (Ref. CL02)
Coldrum conundrums
Recent radiocarbon dating at Cardiff University of some of Coldrum’s bones has shown that they are several hundred years older than was originally thought and are among the earliest remains of Neolithic people ever found in Britain. There were two phases of burials within the barrow, beginning nearly 6,000 years ago, in 3985-3855 BC, for a period of about 100 years, with later burials about 200 years later, around 3600 BC. The reason for this hiatus is a mystery. The skeletons from either or both burial phases may originally have been interred elsewhere before being taken to Coldrum for reburial under its prominent monument.
Further fieldwork was carried out in summer 2013 as part of the Medway Valley Prehistoric Landscapes Project, directed by Dr Paul Garwood, Lecturer in Prehistory at the University of Birmingham. A report on the project is expected within the next few months, 150 years after Ben Harrison’s first visit to Coldrum.
Source: Kent Archaeological Society
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