Coffin Stone

The Coffin Stone, also known as the Coffin and the Table Stone, is a large sarsen stone at the foot of Blue Bell Hill near Aylesford in the south-eastern English county of Kent [1]. The Coffin Stone is a rectangular slab lying flat that measures 4.42 metres in length, 2.59 metres in breadth, and about 0.61 metres in width [1]. Two smaller stones lie nearby and another large slab is now located atop it [1]. In the 1830s it was reported that local farmers found human bones near the stone [1]. An archaeological excavation of the site led by Paul Garwood took place in 2008–09; it found that the megalith was placed in its present location only in the 15th or 16th centuries [1]. The archaeologists found no evidence of a chambered long barrow at the location, and suggested that the Coffin Stone might once have stood upright in the vicinity [1]. The antiquarian William Stukeley made note of the Coffin Stone in his posthumously published 1776 work Itinerarium Curiosum [1].