The London Stone

The famous London Stone is of interest to the antiquarian from its having been the central Milliarium, or milestone in London (similar to that in the Forum at Rome), from which the British highways radiated, and from which the distances on them were reckoned.

The Stone is now inserted in the outer wall of the Church of St. Swithin, in Cannon Street. The top of it is seen through an oval opening covered with a grille. It is a block of Kentish Rag (Lower Greensand), encased in a frame of Bath stone. The London Stone seems to have been as much of a palladium in London as the Coronation Stone was in Scotland.

Shakespeare refers to it in Henry IV., Act IV. Jack Cade, striking the London Stone with his staff, exclaims, "Now is Mortimer lord of this city!" Dryden alludes to the stone in his fable of the "Cock and the Fox."