The Stone-age Rock Shelters of Oldbury Hill (and Kent's other prehistoric sites)

As a kid, I had the unusual privilege of living just a short bike ride away from one of Britain’s oldest and most remarkable prehistoric sites: the Stone-age rock shelters of Oldbury in Kent. Of course, a kid of 10 or 11 could only dimly appreciate the real significance of the place, and the main kick we got out of our many visits there was the thrill of doing something forbidden (two of the three rock shelters were, and still are, elusive places to find, and lie on private land). We were smug in the knowledge that only local kids that had been shown the way could find them, and that we always avoided getting caught trespassing. One of the shelters also had two entrances, and each visit we made sure to crawl in one entrance and emerge, after a few seconds in pitch blackness from the cave’s other mouth. Once I even managed to get my late and dearly missed Dad (whom we’d decided to trust with the secret of the caves’ location) to try crawling in!

This is a good time to mention that the cave shelters at Oldbury are pretty small. Although England’s few other Stone-age cave sites (Creswell Crags, Thor’s Cave, Gough’s Cave and Kent’s Cavern) are far larger in size, they’re natural caverns, whereas the shelters at Oldbury were carved out of the sandstone by our very distant ancestors, during the Paleolithic era. The rock shelters at Oldbury looked quite small to me even as a ten-year-old, because they’ve been partially filled back in following excavation to protect them from erosion.

Today although two of the three cave shelters and are still on private land, the owner of the land thankfully hasn’t (yet) put up any fences or other obstacles, and appears resigned to visits by the occasional curious visitor to this rare and remarkable survivor from Britain’s very, very distant past.

Right, so how do you get to the rock shelters? They lie on a low sandstone bluff jutting out of the northern tip of Oldbury Hill, just outside the village of Ightham (pronounced ‘item’), near Sevenoaks in West Kent. There are several ways to get onto Oldbury Hill, most of which (although not the rock shelters) is owned by the National Trust. For the caves you want the eastern entrance. From the Ightham bypass, turn into Oldbury Lane, pass Ightham Primary School, and continue all the way to the end of the lane (about ½ mile), where two public footpaths continue, climbing onto the wooded hillside.

For the first of the three rock shelters (the easy one to find) take the path on the right, a sunken track climbing up beneath the trees, and keep a look out on the right for the cave shelter carved into the sandstone a few meters above the path.

Now continue up the path and it soon levels out at the top of Oldbury Hill. Follow the path ahead and shortly you’ll see a metal National Trust sign mounted on a post. Just after passing the sign, fork right to emerge on the edge of a very large farmer’s field. Turn right along the edge of this field, and in about fifty meters, push your way through the thick undergrowth, brambles and thicket on your right (you may see traces of where previous visitors have fought their way through), and in a few yards scramble down around the side of the small sandstone rockface to the second rock shelter.

Back to the edge of the field, turn right and follow it for about another 50 meters, then push back through the thickets to the top of another, longer sandstone bluff. Carefully scramble down to the small terrace halfway down the tiny cliff, to reach the last of the rock shelters, which has four or five tiny caves, one of which is the two-mouthed shelter we loved as kids.

Visitors are uncommon enough for there to be no kind of trail down to the shelters, so take care, wear long trousers and shirt sleeves and be prepared to (very briefly) do battle with slippery, crumbly conditions underfoot and scratchy thorn bushes. Less able-bodied visitors shouldn’t attempt going down.

SWANSCOMBE MAN

The rock shelters at Oldbury Hill, although small, are the most important of Kent’s prehistoric sites, simply because they’re vastly older than most other surviving prehistoric sites in the UK. The shelters date to the Middle Palaeolithic period, which means they were carved about 50,000 years ago. For context, after the shelters were carved, the last Ice Age would continue for another 40,000 years, and after it ended today’s British Isles would remain joined to the rest of Europe by the Doggerland land bridge for several thousand years longer still! Stonehenge and all those mysterious Neolithic burial chambers and standing stones dotted around the UK are positively recent by comparison, as they were built over forty thousand years later!

If you find the thought of ancient man living and hunting in this landscape fifty thousand years ago hard to grasp, consider Swanscombe, about ten miles north of Oldbury, where in 1935 a local archaeologist found fragments of a skull belonging to what became known as the Swanscombe Man (who turned out to be a young woman!). She lived – wait for it! – four hundred thousand years ago. The Swanscombe skull fragments were the earliest human remains ever found in the UK until they in turn were surpassed in age by a couple of human teeth and a fragment of bone discovered at Boxgrove in the neighbouring county of West Sussex nearly sixty years later, in 1993. These belonged to an early man who lived a half a million years ago!

Swanscombe has no atmospheric caves or challenging terrain to make a visit memorable (the skull was found in an old quarry), but the site has been developed into the Swanscombe Heritage Park, and is open to visitors.

OTHER PREHISTORIC SITES IN KENT

Kent is relatively rich in surviving remains from the relatively recent Early Neolithic Era. Although we’re still talking nearly 6,000 years ago, it’s (a little) easier to get a tab on this period of time: the Medway Megaliths, as they’re known, were constructed about the same time as West Kennet Long Barrow (described about half way down this earlier blog). They’re maybe 1,000 years older than Stonehenge, and also predate the Great Pyramid by a thousand years or so.

The Kentish Megaliths stand in two clusters, one either side of the River Medway in west Kent. They’re a remarkably isolated little group, being the only known long barrows (communal burial chambers) in eastern England. The next ones you’ll find are over a hundred miles away, in western Oxfordshire and Wiltshire.

The best-known and most complete is Coldrum Long Barrow (another of my childhood haunts, 90 minutes’ walk from my old house). A lot has changed here since I was a kid: the National Trust (who’ve owned the site since 1926) have cleared the thicket that once choked the three great stones of the entrance portal, restoring a magnificent view over the Medway Valley. They’ve also improved the footpath to the stones from the nearest road (half a mile west), and have even provided a car park, although it fills up quickly on weekends.

Even as a child I found this place had a special atmosphere, and going back forty years later, despite the other visitors (Coldrum is far more visited today than it was in the 1970s), it remains the most fascinating and mysterious of the Medway Megaliths.

The two long barrows at nearby Addington always eluded me as a kid. Despite having my 1:25,000 OS map of the area in hand, I failed to find them after several pushbike expeditions from home. I recently found out that’s because the finer of the two, Chestnuts Long Barrow lies out-of-bounds to the curious, on private property, in the extensive grounds of a ramshackle house called Rose Alba. In the past the owner used to charge a fee to see the barrow, but no longer permit even fee-paying visitors.

It’s not the friendliest place, as you’ll notice from the No Entry sign on the front gate, and the CCTV camera and sign mounted on a tree just behind it. This is a real pity as it appears to be possibly the most interesting of all the Medway Megaliths. At least there are plenty of photos of the place online.

Right next to the grounds of Rose Alba, and also on private land but beside the public road and clearly visible from it, through the fence, is Addington Long Burrow. Today it’s just a random but oddly attractive jumble of large sarsen stones, half buried in the grass.

On the far side of the River Medway, the other half of the Medway Megaliths stand north of the quaint old village of Aylesford, on the steep escarpment of the North Downs. Best-known is the curiously named Kit’s Coty House (no one seems to agree where the name came from). It’s a fine sight – three huge flat uprights holding up a huge capstone. The ugly iron grating that surrounds the dolmen (as this kind of burial chamber is called) has been there at least since I was a kid, and continues to ruin the atmosphere of the place. It’s high time it was torn down and the dolmen allowed to dominate its hillside position with dignity.

It's a nice walk up to it from the Pigrims' Way below, along an ancient sunken lane through a natural 'tunnel' of old trees.

Directly below, near the bottom of the downs, a few meters east of Rochester Road, which runs south to Aylesford, stands (or rather lies) Little Kit’s Coty House. Also known as the Countless Stones, this would probably have once been a fine sight. Sadly the burial chamber was demolished in 1690, and today is just a shapely pile of huge stones.

Across the road from the Countless Stones, and now standing in the middle of a large vineyard, is a huge flat sarsen stone lying on the ground called the Coffin Stone. The smaller rock lying in top of it is a much more recent addition. Access is by a path across the vineyard from the busy Pilgrims Way.

Near the top of the downs, above the entrance to the Eurostar railway tunnel, the White Horse Stone stands beside a pretty wooded track. Parking is easy here, beside the little-used Old Chatham Road that branches off the busy A229 beside the Shell petrol garage.

It's just a short walk up another traditional Kentish sunken lane bordered by trees. Parking is easy here, beside the little-used Old Chatham Road that branches off the busy A229 beside the Shell petrol garage.

Parking the car near the three other three Aylesford prehistoric sites is a real headache, however. The best bet is to follow Rochester Road north from Aylesford village, pass the junction with the Pilgrims' Way, and park in the layby on the left near the top of the hill, just before Lower Bell Inn. A loop walk around Kit's Coty House, the Countless Stones and the Coffin Rock from here takes about an hour on paths and busy roads, some of which are without pavements, so take care.