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Great Tottington

moated manor farm near Maidstone in the English county of Kent

Architectural plans, a scale model, maps and brass measuring instruments
Places and architectureInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 21, 2026
Entity authorityQ5600091 ↗
Source-derived summary

Great Tottington is a moated manor farm near Maidstone in the English county of Kent. It is also the site of a spring, around which are scattered numerous sarsen stones which may be the remains of a Neolithic monument and part of the Medway megaliths. Further stones lie around the farmyard. Rather than being genuine megaliths, they may be a recent collection of natural stones brought to the site by eighteenth century farmers clearing the surrounding land. The destruction visited on the megalithic sites of the Medway valley during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries makes conclusive diagnosis difficult.

In 1872 James Fergusson visited the area and noted:

...nearer the village [Aylesford] exists or existed, a line of great stones, extending from a place called Spring Farm, in a north-easterly direction, for a distance of three quarters of a mile, to another spot known as Hale Farm passing through Tollington [sic], where the greater number of the stones are now found. In front of the line near the centre at Tollington lie two obelisks, known to the country people as the coffin stones – probably from their shape. They are 12 feet long by 4 to 6 broad, and about 2 to 3 feet thick. They appear to be partially hewn, or at least shaped, so as to resemble one another.

A footnote records that one stone was almost completely underground, and the other partially buried, and that the dimensions were obtained by probing underground.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Great Tottington” is moated manor farm near Maidstone in the English county of Kent. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Great, Tottington and moated, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewMost useful as a place-based finding aid connecting the present description to earlier jurisdictions, maps and built evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1872—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Great, Tottington and moated is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “moated manor farm near Maidstone in the English county of Kent” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5600091. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1872.

Critical limits

A single description cannot reconcile every naming convention, rebuilding phase or administrative transfer associated with a place. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.

Best used for
  • Historic place names
  • Jurisdictional context
  • Routes into maps and plans
Verify next

Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Great Tottington”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Great Tottington primary sources, Great Tottington archive and Great research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Great Tottington”?
  2. Which authority defined the place, boundary or structure at the relevant date?
  3. What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Great Tottington” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.