The coronation stone Edward I took, students stole back, and Perth now shows
An oblong block of red sandstone, 66 centimetres long and about 152 kilograms, on which Scotland’s kings were made, first recorded at the coronation of Alexander III in 1249. Legend makes it the pillow Jacob slept on at Bethel, carried to Ireland by the prophet Jeremiah; geologists say it is Old Red Sandstone quarried near Scone. In 1296 Edward I took it to Westminster Abbey and fitted it into the Coronation Chair, and English and then British monarchs were crowned over it for more than 500 years. Scots have long said the monks of Scone hid the real stone and fooled him with a substitute. On Christmas Day 1950 four Scottish students lifted it out of the Abbey, broke it in two doing it, buried the larger piece in a field in Kent, and got it to Scotland; it turned up on the altar of Arbroath Abbey on 11 April 1951, and the rumour that copies were made and the wrong one went back has never gone away. It came home to Scotland in 1996, and since March 2024 it has been on show in Perth Museum.
Perth Museum, Perth, Scotland
See it on the map
Other places on the map within a couple of hours of here.
