There's a Mysterious Rock on a London Street

The Full Story

On Cannon Street in the City of London, behind a grille in the wall of a building, sits a lump of limestone. It's called the London Stone.

No one knows what it is.

Some say it's Roman, perhaps the milliarium, the central milestone from which all Roman roads in Britain were measured. That is an unproven theory among several. Some say it's older, a sacred stone from pre-Roman times. Some say it was the stone from which King Arthur drew Excalibur. Its original purpose is simply unknown.

What we know is that the name is first recorded around 1100, and the Stone has been treated with strange reverence ever since. When Jack Cade led his rebellion in 1450, he struck the Stone with his sword and declared himself 'Lord of this city.' When buildings were demolished and rebuilt, the Stone was always preserved and re-mounted.

There's a saying that London will fall if the Stone of Brutus is ever removed or destroyed. It sounds ancient. It isn't: the proverb was invented around 1862 by an eccentric Welsh clergyman, and the city adopted it as if it had always been true. During the Blitz, when the building housing it was bombed, people secured the Stone and found it a new home.

Probably it's just a rock. Probably the legends are nonsense. But the fact that Londoners have protected this stone for the better part of a thousand years, through fires and wars and rebuilding, suggests they've always known something. Even if they can't say what.

Some things are sacred simply because we've always treated them as sacred.