Built of earth and about fifty local sarsen megaliths, the long barrow consisted of a sub-rectangular earthen tumulus enclosed by kerb-stones.

[4] The change came about through contact with continental European societies, although it is unclear to what extent this can be attributed to an influx of migrants or to indigenous Mesolithic Britons adopting agricultural technologies from the continent.

[5] The region of modern Kent would have been key for the arrival of continental European settlers and visitors, because of its position on the estuary of the River Thames and its proximity to the continent.

[8] Environmental data from the vicinity of the White Horse Stone, a putatively prehistoric monolith near the River Medway, supports the idea that the area was still largely forested in the Early Neolithic, covered by a woodland of oak, ash, hazel/alder and Amygdaloideae (stone-fruit trees).

[9] Throughout most of Britain, there is little evidence of cereal or permanent dwellings from this period, leading archaeologists to believe that the island's Early Neolithic economy was largely pastoral, relying on herding cattle, with people living a nomadic or semi-nomadic life.

[14] These chambered tombs were built all along the Western European seaboard during the Early Neolithic, from southeastern Spain up to southern Sweden, including most of the British Isles;[15] the architectural tradition was introduced to Britain from continental Europe in the first half of the fourth millennium BCE.

[29] The chambers were constructed from sarsen, a dense, hard, and durable stone that occurs naturally throughout Kent, having formed out of sand from the Eocene epoch.

[47] A stone chamber was set within the northeastern end of the long barrow,[48] although it had been pulled down at some point in the monument's history, while much of the mound was left standing.

[14] Archaeologists have suggested that this is because Early Neolithic Britons adhered to an ancestor cult that venerated the spirits of the dead, believing that they could intercede with the forces of nature for the benefit of their living descendants.

[52] The archaeologist Robin Holgate stressed that rather than simply being tombs, the Medway Megaliths were "communal monuments fulfilling a social function for the communities who built and used them".

[54] The archaeologist Caroline Malone noted that the tombs would have served as one of various landscape markers that conveyed information on "territory, political allegiance, ownership, and ancestors".

[67] Ashbee suggested that this destruction was probably due to iconoclasm, believing that the burial of the stones likely indicated that medieval Christian zealots had tried to deliberately destroy and defame the pre-Christian monument.

[69] Supporting this idea is comparative evidence, with the Close Roll of 1237 ordering the opening of barrows on the Isle of Wight in search for treasure, a practice that may have spread to Kent around the same time.

[67] Alexander believed that the destruction may have been brought about by a special commissioner, highlighting that the "expertness and thoroughness of the robbery"—as evidenced at Chestnuts—would have necessitated resources beyond that which a local community could likely produce.

[70] In a 1946 paper published in the Folklore journal, John H. Evans recorded a Kentish folk belief which had been widespread "Up to the last generation"; this was that it was impossible for any human being to successfully count the number of stones in the Medway Megaliths.

[76] Aided by the minister of the parish, the Reverend Buttonshaw, Colebooke enquired among elderly locals as to whether they knew of the oak tree mentioned by Harris, but none had.

[78] The later archaeologist John H. Evans described Colebrooke's descriptions and drawings as "almost completely worthless" because the antiquarian mistook the rectangular chambered tomb for a stone circle.

[81] Thomas Wright recorded that in 1845 a local parson, the Reverend Lambert Blackwell Larking, dug into a chamber at Addington, discovering "fragments of rude pottery".

[84] In 1880, the archaeologist Flinders Petrie included the Addington stones in his list of Kentish earthworks; he commented that "with extraordinary perversity [they] have been hitherto described as forming a circle, though they appear to be very plainly in two lines".

[87] Payne noted a folk tradition that stone avenues connected Coldrum to the Addington Long Barrow, although he commented that he was unable to discover any evidence of this feature.

[88] In his 1924 publication dealing with Kent, the archaeologist O. G. S. Crawford, then working as the archaeological officer for the Ordnance Survey, listed the Addington Long Barrow alongside the other Medway Megaliths.

Philp alerted Kent County Council, who arranged for contractors to investigate the reason for the subsidence, which proved to be decades of rabbit burrowing beneath the tarmac.

Comparison with older records revealed that this stone had once been upright but had been buried where it stood in the 19th century by workmen who were replacing the trackway with a paved road.