John Abraham Bayly's View of Little Kit's Coty House

John Abraham Bayly’s View of Little Kit’sCoty House

Susan Greaney

A watercolour sketch of the early Neolithic chambered tombs in Kent known as Kit’s Coty House

and Little Kit’s Coty House, signed by J Bayly and dated 1772, has recently been discovered. The

artist was presumably John Abraham Bayly (fl. 1755–1794), prolific engraver of maps and views,

especially in Kent. The only other early drawing of Little Kit’s Coty House was made by Stukeley in

1722, and it provides only scant evidence that Little Kit’s Coty House was a chambered tomb;

some have expressed doubts that this was a prehistoric monument at all. But Bayly’s view shows

the two upright stones very clearly as the uprights of a large chamber, similar to the one that

survives at Kit’s Coty House. This drawing therefore adds weight to the suggestion that this site

was also a prehistoric chamber, similar to those in the group of monuments known as the Medway

Megaliths.

A page with two watercolour sketches signed

‘J. Bayly’ was recently obtained by the National

Monuments Record, purchased because one of

them depicted Kit’s Coty House in Kent, an early

Neolithic chambered tomb in the guardianship of

English Heritage (Fig. 1). The lower sketch,

captioned ‘North View of the Lower Monument, as

it appeared in Au 17729, illustrates a less well

known site, Little Kit’s Coty House, also known as

Lower Kit’s Coty House, another prehistoric

monument in guardianship, situated about 450 m

to the south-west of Kit’s Coty House (Fig. 2).

The painting is one of only two known

depictions of Little Kit’s Coty House dating from

the 18th century. The other was a drawing by

William Stukeley, made in 1722 (Fig. 3). He had

received a letter earlier that same year from

Hercules Ayleway, a local antiquarian, who

recorded that local people remembered the

chamber complete with a capstone, but that it had

been pulled down some 30 years earlier.1 Stukeley

therefore drew a conjectured reconstruction, but

apparently influenced more by his interest in coves

and stone circles than by actual observations

(Fig. 4).2

J Bayly is listed in Benezit’s Dictionary of Artists

as an engraver, who lived in London in about 1787.

He engraved portraits of Thomas Dilworth

(?-1780), presumably the schoolbook author, and

of John Thorpe (1682–1750), the Kent physician

and antiquary, and he drew 19 plates of

antiquities.3 A search of the internet reveals several

of these engravings – plates for Lyson’s Environs of

London, including Wickham Court and Bromley

College, both in Kent, drawn in 1779, and a view of

Chilham Castle, also in Kent, in William Watts’ The

Seats of the Nobility and Gentry, drawn in 1785.

The spelling of the surname is not common, and

it can be suggested that he was John Abraham

Bayly (fl. 1755–94), a prolific engraver of views

and maps in the late 18th century. He created

fantastic maps of English counties and countries of

the world, and worked with Joseph Banks on many

important maps of areas explored by Captain

James Cook – for example, a chart of New Zealand

printed in 1772.4 His maps include plans of London

published in 1761;5 one of the Queen Charlotte

(Soloman) Islands from 1773; a chart of the solar

system drawn in 1782; a coastal map of France and

Spain in 1784; and several maps of Asia, Africa,

Persia and the Americas, published in The

Geographical Magazine by WF Martyn in 1793–

1794. Several of the maps published in this volume

are signed ‘J. Bayly, geographer’.6

John Abraham Bayly appears to have been

particularly active in Kent. He engraved a series of

English Heritage Historical Review, Volume 5, 2010

# English Heritage, 2011 DOI: 10.1179/175201611X13079771582303

Fig. 1. J Bayly, Kit’s Coty

House (above) and Little

Kit’s Coty House (below),

watercolour, 1772. English

Heritage. National

Monuments Record,

DA00003.

Fig. 2. Little Kit’s Coty

House as it appears today.

Susan Greaney.

Fig. 3. William Stukeley,

Little Kit’s Coty House, with

Kit’s Coty House on the

skyline, 1722. Bodleian

Library, Gough Gen. Top. 57,

Plate 34.

SUSAN GREANEY

8 English Heritage Historical Review, Volume 5, 2010

maps of the county hundreds for Hasted’s History

… of Kent, published in 1797.7 As such he can be

connected with the Kit’s Coty paintings with a

considerable degree of certainty; the date of 1772

falls in the middle of his active period. It can be

suggested that the Kit’s Coty monuments were local

sites that Bayly visited and drew for his own

pleasure, and that this page of watercolours came

from his private collection.

The jumble of sarsen stones that form Little Kit’s

Coty House are probably the collapsed chamber of

an early Neolithic chambered tomb. It and Kit’s

Coty House are two of a group of monuments

known as the Medway Megaliths, clustered in two

groups on either side of the upper Medway valley.

Five survive in good condition, and more examples,

today marked only by single standing stones, may

well have been destroyed – sarsen stone was highly

prized for building and road construction in the

18th and 19th centuries. Others are known only

from antiquarian reports.8

Carinated bowl pottery was found associated

with burials within the Chestnuts chambered

tomb, located 10km away on the other site of the

Medway valley, giving a broad early Neolithic

date to this group of monuments. Recent

radiocarbon dating of at least 16 individuals

buried within the chamber at another of the sites

nearby, Coldrum, has shown that this particular

monument was probably constructed by the 39th

century BC, nearly 6,000 years ago.9 This date

from Coldrum makes it one of the earliest

(perhaps the earliest) known monuments in the

British Isles.

This was a pivotal period of the Neolithic, when

the first domestic animals and cereals were being

introduced to Britain from mainland Europe.

Together with an unusual and broadly

contemporary large timber building excavated

during archaeological work for the Channel Tunnel

Rail Link a few hundred metres away at White

Horse Stone,10 and a causewayed enclosure in the

Medway Valley at Burham,11 these burial

monuments show that this area of Kent was home

to a vibrant and pioneering farming community in

the early Neolithic.

What can this newly discovered watercolour tell

us about Little Kit’s Coty House? It is not clear

Fig. 4. William Stukeley, a

view of Kit’s Coty House

above, with plan and

conjectured reconstruction

of Little Kit’s Coty House

below, 1722. Bodleian

Library, Gough Gen. Top. 57,

Plate 32.

VIEW OF LITTLE KIT’S COTY HOUSE

English Heritage Historical Review, Volume 5, 2010 9

from what remains that there was a covering long

barrow; any hypothesis about the original form of

the monument remains speculative. The evidence

from Stukeley’s early drawing, his enigmatic

reconstruction and the recollections of local

people recorded by Ayleway, provide only scant

evidence that a chamber stood on this site. Due to

the jumbled nature of the stones, some have

expressed doubts that this was a prehistoric

monument at all (Fig. 5).

But Bayly’s view, from a slightly different angle

to Stukeley’s drawing, shows the two upright

stones very clearly, leaning in towards each

other. It is hard not to see these as the uprights of

a large chamber, similar to the one that survives

at Kit’s Coty House. This drawing therefore adds

weight to the suggestion that this site was a

prehistoric chamber, similar perhaps in original

appearance to the other Medway Megaliths,

adding another layer to our understanding of the

monument. More archaeological information

may be soon forthcoming from the results of the

Medway Valley Prehistoric Landscapes Project,

led by Professor Paul Garwood, who has

conducted geophysical surveys at both Kit’s Coty

House and Little Kit’s Coty House and

excavations at the former site, as part of an

ongoing research project into the Medway

Megaliths and their context.12

ACKNOWLEGEMENTS

With thanks to Ian Leith, NMR acquisitions officer,

for the purchase of the drawing and his initial

curiosity; Jennie Anderson, NMR cataloguer, for a

preliminary search of J Bayly’s works; and to

Professor Paul Garwood, Lecturer in prehistory at

the University of Birmingham, for discussion and

information about his research project. I am

indebted to David Alexander for advice about John

Abraham Bayly.

NOTES1 P Ashbee, ‘William Stukeley’s Kentish studies of Roman and otherremains’, Archaeologia Cantiana, CXXI, 2001, 61–102.2 P Ashbee, ‘William Stukeley, the Kit’s Coty Houses and his coves: anote’, Archaeologia Cantiana, CXII, 1993, 17–24.3 E Benezit and J Busse (eds), Dictionnaire des peintres, sculpteurs,dessinateurs, etgraveurs, Paris, 1999, 905.

Fig. 5. The small trees that

Bayly depicts amongst the

stones grew to some

considerable height. Their

growth and subsequent

removal may account for

discrepancies between the

18th century drawing of the

monument and its present

appearance. Maidstone

Museum MMPC-Box1-0003.

SUSAN GREANEY

10 English Heritage Historical Review, Volume 5, 2010

4 The David Rumsay Historical Map Collection has three of J Bayly’smaps – see http://www.davidrumsey.com/5 J Bayly, The City Guide, or a Pocket Plan of London, Westminster andSouthwark with the new buildings, London, T Bowles, J Bowles and son,1761.6 For example, ‘A New Map of Italy by J. Bayly, geographer’, in WFMartyn, The Geographical Magazine, or New System of Geography,London, 1793–1794.7 Edward Hasted, The History and Topographical Survey of the County ofKent, Canterbury, 1797, Volumes 2–12, (e.g. of Maidstone, volume 2, pl. 8)8 P Ashbee, ‘The Medway Megaliths in Perspective’, ArchaeologiaCantiana, CXXI, 2001, 61–204; B Philip and M Dutto, The MedwayMegaliths: an illustrated guide to the famous Neolithic chambered long-barrows of the Medway area, Kent Archaeological Trust, 1985.9 M Wysocki, S Griffiths, REM Hedges, T Higham, Y Fernandez-Jalvo,and A Whittle, ‘Coldrum: dating, dietary analysis and taphonomy of the

human remains from a Medway megalithic Monument’, in prep.; AWhittle, A Bayliss, and F Healy, ‘The timing and tempo of change:examples from the fourth millennium cal BC in southern England’,Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 18(1), 2008, 65–70.10 C Hayden, ‘White Horse Stone and the earliest Neolithic in thesouth east’, South East Research Framework resource assessmentseminar, 2010, available at https://shareweb.kent.gov.uk/default.aspx; C Hayden and E Stafford, The Prehistoric Landscape atWhite Horse Stone, Boxley, Kent, CTRL Integrated Site Report Series,Oxford Wessex Archaeology, 2006.11 A Oswald, C Dyer and M Barber, The Creation of Monuments:Neolithic causewayed enclosures of the British Isles, English Heritage,Swindon, 2001, 96–97.12 E Baldwin and P Garwood, Kit’s Coty House and Little Kit’s CotyHouse, Kent: geophysical survey 2009, Birmingham Archaeology, ReportPN1964.

Susan Greaney is a Historian in the Properties Presentation Department of English Heritage. Her research

interest is in the monuments and landscapes of Neolithic and Bronze Age Britain. She is currently

developing the content of the new visitor centre at Stonehenge.

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English Heritage Historical Review, Volume 5, 2010 11