London Stone in seven strange myths

Today, all that is left of the once-famous London Stone is a block of limestone – with a glass front open to public viewing at 111 Cannon Street in London EC4. It had sat for years behind an iron grille in the wall at the same location, in a dilapidated 1960s office building. A bronze plaque informed the passer-by that “Its origin and purpose are unknown”.

Its origin is indeed mysterious, and whenever development of the site was proposed, the media worked up the mystery – not forgetting to mention the “belief” that if the stone were moved or destroyed, the future of London itself would be jeopardised.

After a brief ‘stay’ with London Museum as the building at Cannon Street was rebuilt, London Stone was reinstated at its original address in 2018.

However, much of what we think we know about London Stone is untrue, or at best is guesswork unsupported by any evidence.

The stone itself is ‘oolitic limestone’, a type first brought to London for building and sculptural purposes in the Roman period – but also used in Saxon and medieval times. It originally stood in front of the great Roman building often identified as the provincial governor’s palace. That’s where Cannon Street station is now.

It has been suggested that the stone was originally some sort of monument erected in the palace forecourt. Some have described it – without any evidence – as being a Roman ‘milliarium’, the central milestone from which distances in the Roman province of Britain were measured.

On the other hand, it also stands at the centre of the grid of new streets laid out after King Alfred re-established London in 886. This was after Viking attacks had destroyed the original Saxon town, so it may have served some significant function for late Saxon Londoners. And it must be at this period that it received its singular name – ‘Lundene Stane’ in Old English.

John Strype, in his 1720 updated edition of John Stow’s Survey of London, seems to have been the first to offer the proposal that London Stone was “an Object, or Monument, of Heathen Worship” erected by the Druids. Thus, later, London Stone was to play an important but not always consistent role in the visionary works of William Blake, prominent among them being its identification as an altar stone upon which Druids carried out bloody sacrifices.

Where Albion slept beneath the Fatal Tree,
And the Druids’ golden Knife
Rioted in human gore, In Offerings of Human Life…
They groan’d aloud on London Stone,
They groan’d aloud on Tyburn’s Brook…

(Jerusalem, plate 27 ‘To the Jews’)

There is no evidence for this, and London Stone, whatever its purpose, was certainly not erected before the Roman period.

London Stone entered national history briefly in 1450, when John or Jack Cade, leader of the Kentish rebellion against the corrupt government of Henry VI, entered London, and striking London Stone with his sword, claimed to be “lord of this city”. There is no recorded precedent for his action. Accounts even differ as to when it occurred – when Cade first entered the city on Friday, 3 July, or the following day.

Unfortunately, we know the story best from Shakespeare’s Henry VI Part 2 – in which Cade seats himself on the stone as on a throne. This is great theatre. It is also fiction. But it has led to the belief that London Stone was traditionally used for such purposes. Shakespeare’s inventive genius has a lot to answer for.

The stone has been surprisingly migratory in the last few hundred years. It originally stood on Candlewick Street (Cannon Street) on the south side near the gutter.

It seems to have been damaged by the Great Fire of 1666, which destroyed all the surrounding buildings. By 1720, what was left of the stone was protected by a small stone cupola built over it, and in 1742 it was moved as a traffic hazard, to be placed against the door of the new Wren church of St Swithin. Two further moves, in 1798 and the 1820s, placed it eventually where it was to remain for more than 100 years, built into the middle of the church’s south wall.

The Wren church was gutted during the Blitz, but London Stone remained in place until 1960, when it was moved to the then Guildhall Museum (housed in the Royal Exchange) for safekeeping. In October 1962, the stone was placed at 111 Cannon Street, in the specially constructed grilled and glazed alcove in the wall. In 2016, it was temporarily in the care of London Museum, and it’s now back at Cannon Street in the wall of a new office and retail space.

By the end of the 18th century, romantic writers were beginning to suggest a relationship between the survival of London Stone and the well-being of London itself. This recalled the legendary “palladium” of Greek mythology, much like the statue of Pallas Athene that protected the city of Troy.

This concept received a great boost from the apparent discovery of an ‘ancient saying’: “So long as the Stone of Brutus is safe, so long will London flourish”. This first appeared in print in 1862 – apparently no previous writer was aware of it. Where did this ‘ancient saying’ come from, and why had it been forgotten until 1862? And why ‘the Stone of Brutus’?

The article retails a supposed legend that London Stone was set up by Brutus of Troy, the first king of Britain. The author of the Notes and Queries article claims that Brutus had brought the base of the original statue of Pallas Athena from Troy and erected it as an altar in a temple of Diana in ‘New Troy’, and that the ancient kings of Britain had sworn their oaths upon it. Again, no other writer had claimed to know this tradition.

A modern myth has arisen that the Lord Mayor of London serves as a ‘custodian’ or ‘guardian of the Stone’. It is an obvious concept, but belief in a guardian of London Stone does not seem ever to have existed in historical times, nor does the Corporation of the City of London list it as one of the Lord Mayor’s official duties. In fact, until 1972, when London Stone was officially Listed (Grade II*) as a structure of special historical interest, neither the Corporation nor the Lord Mayor seems to have taken any responsibility for the stone.

In the late 19th century, folklorist George Laurence Gomme put forward his opinion that London Stone was London’s “fetish stone”: “In early Aryan days, when a village was first established, a stone was set up. To this stone the head man of the village made an offering once a year.”

The Lord Mayor was, therefore, the lineal descendant of the first “village head man” of London – see Myth 6. This authoritative statement by a well-respected folklorist had a great influence on other writers.

In 1937 another folklorist, Lewis Spence, published a book on Legendary London, claiming the ‘Brutus’ legend as a traditional memory of actual historical events. Authors interested in geomancy (the magic of the landscape) have identified the Stone as a “mark stone” on several ley lines. Others fear its removal from its original location has violated the integrity of the City’s sacred geometry.

These ideas have inspired episodes in several recent urban fantasy novels – stories with supernatural elements set in real-world urban environments – from Charlie Fletcher’s Stoneheart trilogy to Kate Griffin’s The Midnight Mayor. In the novel Kraken, by award-winning author China Miéville, London Stone is “the beating heart of London”, guarded by a cabal of ‘Londonmancers’.

The significance of London Stone, and the importance of taking measures for its preservation, depend not only on its actual age and origins, but on the reputation it has acquired over the years since.

This is an updated and edited excerpt of the article written by John Clark, Curator Emeritus (formerly curator of London Museum’s medieval collections), who has extensively researched the history of London Stone.