The name "Coldrum" dates from at least the mid-19th century, and comes from an adjacent farmhouse, Coldrum Lodge, which has since been demolished. From 1842 to 1844, the antiquarian Beale Post authored an unpublished account of the monument in which he stated that skulls had been found in the terrace, close to the chamber, in 1804 and 1825. The earliest known reference in print to the Coldrum Stones comes from Albert Way 1845, when it was erroneously described as a stone circle with a cromlech. In 1856, John Mitchell Kemble and the Reverend Lambert Larkin excavated at the site, reporting to the Central Committee of the British Archaeological Association that they had discovered sherds of pottery, some of which they suspected to be Anglo-Saxon in date.