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London Stone, on temporary display at the Museum of London. Author Lord Belbury

Hands up if you’ve heard of the London Stone. It’s our oldest relic going back thousands of years, to the time of long, long ago.

Of course, I don’t blame you if you haven’t. London’s ancient past has sadly been lost in the swirling sands of time. In fact, I bet more people have heard of Romulus and Remus the twin brothers who were raised by a she-wolf and founded Rome!

Which is a shame really because it’s important that Londoners know that we too, have got a cracking mythological past, just as nutty as the tale of the Roman twins, and the evidence is still there, safely tucked away in the city.

Over the years the London Stone has said to be used as a Roman stone marker, a magical stone during the time of King Arthur & Merlin, and a stone that invaders have struck as a symbolic gesture as a way of declaring London is theirs.

But the story of the stone is much older and more fascinating than that.

It all starts with Brutus of Troy. Now just before you get excited, that’s not the Brad Pit character from the film Troy. He was Achilles. No Brutus was actually a bit of a wayward character. He’d been banished from Italy his homeland on some trumped-up charge for killing his mother and father, though from what I understand, it was all a terrible misunderstanding. Anyway, he spends the next several years touring ancient Greece, collecting bands of disaffected Trojan warriors who’ve been cast out of Troy. They see Brutus as their natural King and leader and set about committing acts of wanton violence on the local population. Anyway, one day Brutus goes through a complete reassessment of his life when he’s visited by the Goddess Dianna in his dreams.

She tells him that there’s a land far away in the western hemisphere, crying out for a guy like Brutus and his followers to make a fresh start.

So Brutus tells his men, and though they are bit dubious at first, they eventually land in Britain, then called Albion, at what is now Totnes in South Devon. The locals must have been pleased to see hm because they erect a stone monument in his memory (still there).

However, there is one rather important aspect about this island that Dianna conveniently left out when she was giving Brutus the advertising spiel. It’s inhabited by giants who are not particularly well disposed to newcomers. Sounds wearingly familiar.

Brutus and his men are immediately set upon by these giants, but carry out a classic military flanking manoeuvre and rout their oversized attackers, so much so, they flee north and are last seen heading for Caledonia (Scotland to me and you.)

Two giants are kept captive and Brutus and the gang head east looking for a suitable place to make permanent camp. They eventually arrive at the site of a dark winding river called the Tamesis, and Brutus remembers Dianna’s words “Make your city by the side of the black river.”  He looks around and declares this to be the place.

Now this is the crucial bit. Brutus ever since he decided on his epic venture, has been lugging a great big stone around which he intends to use as a foundation stone for his new city. He’s literally schlepped it from Ancient Greece.

He places it at a crossroads and declares his new city to be called ‘New Troy’. Through time it eventually is renamed ‘London’ (more about that later). But there’s a famous expression which goes:  “As long as the stone of Brutus is safe, London will flourish”

And though the stone has changed location a few times and to be honest, no one really knows what to do with it, it’s been here ever since and one way or another, London has flourished.

So, here’s to Brutus of Troy, mythical founder of London, who left us the London Stone to remind us, that our past is actually a lot more interesting than we originally thought.