Thursday 28 May 2009

London Stone (1)

The London Stone is one of those strange bits of London esoterica which few people know about - but in this case, was in its day a pretty major landmark of London.

This is the mystical heart of London. Possibly a Roman waymarker, possibly just a big stone that early Londoners attached significance to in their pagan way. Like the Ravens at the tower of London, it's safety is linked to the safety of the Kingdom, and indeed it survived having a bomb dropped on the church it was situated in in WW2.

It has been moved however, and seems to have lost somewhere a lot of its size - once it was a tall freestanding obelisk, now its just a large oblong rock with a hole in the top.

Currently its behind a little cage on a bank building on the North side of Cannon street, hard to notice and pretty hard to see even if you do notice it!

The building it's under is now empty and due to be demolished, I don't know what will happen to the Stone. Hopefully it'll be a little bit better looked after in its next home, though I don't know if I want it to be 'discovered' - its quite nice to have it there, the forgotten heart of London lying at the feet of commuters.

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