More information : The Blue Bell Hill Dolmen, Kent, destroyed. A sketch in the Maidstone
Museum gives these measurements:
N stone 7.5 feet x 1 foot 1 inch x 4 feet 9 inches.
S stone 7.0 feet x 2 feet 3 inches x 5 feet 9 inches.
W stone 3.0 feet x 4 feet x 1 foot 6 inches. Centre stone 1.0 feet x 2 feet.
Burial place, originally in a barrow. A skeleton of a man and
fragments of red pottery were found, but no record seems to have been
kept. On either side of the ancient way which runs through the wood on Blue Bell Hill are a vast number of sarsens, seemingly the remains of avenues and circles. Bensted's map, however, gives them as all natural or scattered boulders. (1)
Description of the megaliths on Blue Bell Hill. Site plan. (2)
Several sarsens were seen on the edge of Warren Road in the vicinity
of TQ 748 611 but none approaching the size of the largest noted by
Authority 1. No further particular information but see TQ 76 SW 32 for general information on the sarsens of this district. (3)
Blue Bell Hill cTQ 75 61. Groups of sarsens lie in several places
around the lower slopes of Blue Bell Hill, spreading across to
Westfield Wood. None of these have known prehistoric associations. The sarsens may be in their natural geological positions, and where gathered in a group merely represent the efforts of a local farmer to clear his fields. (4-6)
Stones of Blue Bell Hill. Several scattered stones considered by the
late Mr Thomas Wright to be the coverings or entrances to sepulchral
chambers. It was found that each group of stones was surrounded by a
small circle of stones, and excavations carried out in 1844 showed
that one of these stones was laid across what was apparently the mouth of a round pit cut in the chalk and filled with flints. According to the reports of the inhabitants of the district many similar pits had been found on the hill in former times, and generally one or two large stones were found on the pit's mouth. Enormous numbers of flints were found in the pits, and many of them were utilized as road metal when a new road was made. (7,8)
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