London Stone is a historic landmark housed at 111 Cannon Street in the City of London. It is an irregular block of oolitic limestone measuring 53 × 43 × 30 cm (21 × 17 × 12"), the remnant of a once much larger object that had stood for many centuries on the south side of the street. It is designated a Grade II* listed structure. The name "London Stone" was first recorded around the year 1100. The date and original purpose of the stone are unknown, although it is possibly of Roman origin. There has been interest and speculation about it since the medieval period, but modern claims that it was formerly an object of veneration, or has some occult significance, are unsubstantiated.
Description The present London Stone is only the upper portion of a once much larger object. The surviving portion is a block of oolitic limestone approximately 53 cm wide, 43 cm high, and 30 cm front to back (21 × 17 × 12 inches). A study in the 1960s indicated that the stone is Clipsham limestone, a good-quality stone from Rutland transported to London for building purposes in both the Roman and medieval periods. More recently, Kevin Hayward has suggested that it may be Bath stone, the stone most used for monuments and sculpture in early Roman London and in Saxon times. The stone is located on the north side of Cannon Street, opposite Cannon Street station, in an aperture in the wall of 111 Cannon Street (EC4N 5AR), within a Portland stone casing.
History
When London Stone was erected and what its original function was are unknown, although there has been much speculation. The stone was originally located on the south side of medieval Candlewick Street (afterward widened to create modern Cannon Street), opposite the west end of St Swithin's Church. It is shown in this position on the Copperplate map of London, dating to the 1550s, and also appears on the derivative "Woodcut" map of the 1560s. It was described by the London historian John Stow in his Survey of London (1598) as "a great stone called London stone", "pitched upright ... fixed in the ground verie deep, fastened with bars of iron". Stow does not give the dimensions of this "great stone", but a French visitor to London in 1578 had recorded that the stone was three feet high (above ground), two feet wide, and one foot thick (90 × 60 × 30 cm). Thus, although it was a local landmark, the part of it standing above ground was not particularly large.
Middle Ages The earliest reference to the stone is usually said to be that in a medieval document cited by Stow in 1598. He refers to an early list of properties in London belonging to Christ Church, Canterbury (Canterbury Cathedral), and says that one piece of land was described as lying "neare unto London stone". Stow claims that the list had been bound into the end of a Gospel Book given to the cathedral by "Ethelstane king of the west Saxons", usually identified as Æthelstan, king of England (924–939). However, it is impossible to confirm Stow's account, since the document he saw cannot now be identified with certainty. Nevertheless, the earliest extant list of Canterbury's London properties, which has been dated to between 1098 and 1108, does refer to a property given to the cathedral by a man named "Eadwaker æt lundene stane" ("Eadwaker at London Stone"). Although not bound into a Gospel Book (it is now bound into a volume of miscellaneous medieval texts with a Canterbury provenance (MS Cotton Faustina B. vi) in the British Library), it could be that it was this, or a similar text, that Stow saw.
Like Eadwaker, other medieval Londoners acquired or adopted the byname "at London Stone" or "of London Stone" because they lived nearby. One of these was "Ailwin of London Stone", the father of Henry Fitz-Ailwin de Londonestone, the first Mayor of the City of London, who took office some time between 1189 and 1193, and governed the city until his death in 1212. The Fitz-Ailwin house stood away from Candlewick Street, on the north side of St Swithin's church. London Stone was a well-known landmark in medieval London, and when in 1450 Jack Cade, leader of a rebellion against the corrupt government of Henry VI, entered the city with his men, he struck his sword on London Stone and claimed to be "Lord of this city". Contemporary accounts give no clue as to Cade's motivation, or how his followers or the Londoners would have interpreted his action. There is nothing to suggest he was carrying out a traditional ceremony or custom.
16th and 17th centuries By the time of Queen Elizabeth I London Stone was not merely a landmark, shown and named on maps, but a visitor attraction in its own right. Tourists may have been told variously that it had stood there since before the city existed, or that it had been set up by order of King Lud, legendary rebuilder of London, or that it marked the centre of the city, or that it was "set [up] for the tendering and making of payment by debtors". It appears to have been routinely used in this period as a location for the posting and promulgation of a variety of bills, notices, and advertisements. In 1608 it was listed in a poem by Samuel Rowlands as one of the "sights" of London (perhaps the first time the word was used in that sense) shown to "an honest Country foole" on a visit to town. During the 17th century the stone continued be used as an "address", to identify a locality. Thus, for example, Thomas Heywood's biography of Queen Elizabeth I, Englands Elizabeth (1631), was, according to its title page, "printed by Iohn Beale, for Phillip Waterhouse; and are to be sold at his shop at St Pauls Head, neere London stone"; and the English Short Title Catalogue lists over 30 books published between 1629 and the 1670s with similar references to London Stone in the imprint. In 1671 the Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers broke up a batch of substandard spectacles on London Stone:
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