FROM time to time I am asked about the origin of the large stone monoliths in Bradbourne Park and in the garden of No 5 Pontoise Close, Sevenoaks.

The former has been moved from its original site but the one in Pontoise Close has been in place ever since Francis Crawshay had it placed there sometime after 1870 when he came to live in Bradbourne Hall.

Crawshay, born in 1811, was the son of an ironmaster of Cyfarthfa Castle, Merthyr Tydfil.

In the early 1830s his father, William Crawshay put him in charge of a new tinplate works at Treforest, near Pontypridd. Known as "Mr Frank" by the workers he learned to speak Welsh in order to communicate with them and lived at Forest House, Treforest, with his wife and eight children.

It was during this time he became friends with Dr William Price, the Chartist and druid. Francis erected his own druidic circle at Forest House which actually survived until the 1950s when the circle was demolished for a college campus.

Following the closure of the tinplate works at Hirwaun and Treforest in 1859 and 1867 respectively, Francis, a wealthy man, retired to Bradbourne Hall, the great stone mansion built by the Bosville family in 1689.

Francis Crawshay acquired the house from the Betenson family in 1870 and, after settling in, set about to erect a new Druidic circle in the grounds of the house.

Those who came to know him well said he was an eccentric character who enjoyed indulging in midnight druidical processions in the estate, usually attired in nautical dress.

It is also said that the eerie appearance of the monoliths kept the superstitious locals out of the grounds after dark.

Crawshay enjoyed just eight years at Bradbourne Hall but that was sufficient time to place a massive bell on a tripod in front of the house.

It was cast at Lyon in France in 1871 and weighed more than two tons with a diameter of 59½ins, making it the second largest bell in Kent after Canterbury Cathedral's Great Dunstan.

It was also believed to be the heaviest bell of foreign manufacture and one of the heaviest in the whole of the country.

Every morning at 6am and again at noon and then six in the evening the Great Bell of Bradbourne would chime.

Those living in Riverhead and north Sevenoaks would clap their hands over the ears, presumably cursing Francis Crawshay.

It could be heard in Seal. When Crawshay was bedridden with one of his regular attacks of gout he rang the bell with a rope from his bedroom window, sometimes in the middle of the night.

It survived in the grounds of Bradbourne until 1918 when a bellfounding firm bought it as scrap metal.

By that time Francis Crawshay had long since died and the house was in the ownership of the Lambarde family, eventually to be abandoned. After standing empty for more than a decade it was demolished to make way for Ideal Homes' new modern estate.

Crawshay died in 1878 and was buried, not in Sevenoaks or Riverhead, but in Brasted churchyard where a large gravestone lists the names and ages of his children.

The surviving monolith in Pontoise Close is, according to English Heritage, a "tall Doric column of red Cornish granite.

"Thought to have been fashioned and erected by order of the then owner, Francis Crawshay (1811-78), of the Crawshay family of Cyfarthfa Castle, Merthyr Tydfil; the Crawshays were amongst leading late 18th and early 19th iron masters in South Wales, and owned iron tinplate works in the Merthyr Tydfil area. Francis Crawshay was a member of the Order of Druids of Wales."

It was listed in 1986.

One of his grandsons, Lionel Henry de Barri Crawshay became a naturalist and botanist.

In 1914 Lionel enlisted in the 2/4th (Territorial Force) Battalion, The Queen's (Royal West Surrey Regiment), at Maidstone and was killed on May 4 1917, aged 34, when the SS Transylvania was torpedoed in the Mediterranean.