This Week In London’s History
Random London Fact Of The Week
Ever heard of the London Stone?
Well it’s not exactly London’s best-kept secret, but then again it’s not our city’s most widely-known historic artefact either. We may have mentioned it about a year ago, but even that hasn’t done much to raise this amazingly historic relic’s public profile.
Mounted in a glass case set into the wall of a sports shop near Cannon Street, the slightly incongruous ancient stone is variously claimed to have been:
It’s probably safe to say that not all of these claims are true. However we do know that the stone was originally quite a bit larger than its current surviving remains, and that it used to sit in the middle of Cannon Street itself before being moved to the pavement outside St Swithin’s Church. It soon became what was described as ‘a nuisance’ sitting in the middle of the pavement, so it was set into the wall of the church to keep it out of the way of pedestrians. When the church was demolished following bomb damage from the Second World War, it was stored in the Guildhall Museum for a while, before being finally relocated to its current site at 111 Cannon Street.
The latest chapter in the stone’s history involves plans to relocate it again, initially to the Museum of London, while the building that currently houses it is demolished.
More information on the stone, including how ‘cowboy builders’ nearly doomed London by taking a chisel to it (the stone, not the whole of London), can be found in this BBC News article from last year.
London’s Weather This Week
Once again the coming week will be a mixture of sunshine and rain. Unfortunately, it’s looking like the emphasis will be on rain, and it’s likely to turn a bit colder than you might normally expect for the next couple of evenings.
Photo of Big Ben (the bell, not the clock tower named after it) by Deryc Sands, taken from the United Kingdom Parliament website under the terms of Parliamentary Copyright.