page_title: London Stone
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: London Stone / History
caption_attribution_description: English: London Stone and St Swithin's Church in Cannon Street, London, as depicted on the "Copperplate" map of London of c.1553-59
context_page_description: 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, the remnant of a once much larger object that had stood for many centuries on the south side of the street.
  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.
context_section_description: 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 (since widened to create modern Cannon Street) opposite the west end of St Swithin's Church, and is shown in this position on the "Copperplate" map of London, dating to the 1550s, and on the derivative "Woodcut" map of the 1560s. It was described by the London historian John Stow in 1598 as "a great stone called London stone", "pitched upright... fixed in the ground verie deep, fastned 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, London Stone, at least that part of it standing above ground, was not particularly large.
caption: London Stone and St Swithin's Church as shown on the "Copperplate" map of c.1553–59
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