Smythe's Megalith, Chestnuts Long Barrow, Lower Kit's Coty House, Kit's Coty House, Coldrum Long Barrow, and Addington Long Barrow. 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. Conversely, the archaeologist John Alexander believed that this damage resulted from a robbery by medieval treasure hunters. 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. 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. Folklore and folk tradition When Thomas Wright investigated the site in about 1850, he was aided by a local man who believed that a crock of gold would be unearthed there. 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. The countless stones motif is not unique to Kent but has been recorded at other megalithic monuments in Britain and Ireland. The earliest textual evidence for it is found in an early 16th-century document, where it applies to Stonehenge in Wiltshire, although an early 17th-century document also applied it to The Hurlers, a set of three stone circles in Cornwall. Later records reveal that it had gained widespread distribution in England, as well as a single occurrence each in Wales and Ireland. The folklorist S. P. Menefee suggested that it could be attributed to an animistic understanding that these megaliths had lives of their own. Antiquarian and archaeological investigation The antiquarian John Harris mentioned Addington Long Barow in his History of Kent, published posthumously in 1719. He noted that the area where the barrow stood was known locally as "the Warren", and that an "old clerk" informed him that an oak tree had formerly grown in the centre of the stones. The monument was next recorded by the antiquarian Josiah Colebrooke in a short article for Archaeologia,