London Stone

as shown on the "Copperplate" map of ]] 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…

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…