Scotland celebrates as historic stone of Destiny returns home
The announcement was as much of a surprise as it was welcomed.
When Prime Minister John Major told Westminster on July 3, 1996, that the Stone of Destiny was to be returned to Scotland, it ended an exile that stretched into the centuries.
The historic and iconic stone was removed by Edward I 700 years earlier, in 1296, to Westminster Abbey from Scone Palace, and since then every English and British sovereign has been crowned on the stone, as part of the coronation chair.
Michael Forsyth, the Scottish Secretary at the time, insisted it was not a political gesture in the face of rising Scottish nationalism and said the stone remained the property of The Queen.
It was said that Forsyth’s young daughter first raised the idea of returning the legendary block of historic red sandstone, also known as the Stone of Scone, which was quarried from the Perthshire town.
Nevertheless, it was a move welcomed by those Scots who had long campaigned for its return, with the artefact having previously been in place at Scone Abbey.
There have been many theories about its authenticity, stretching back centuries.
One of the most famous centres on the audacious theft of the stone in 1950 by four Scottish students.
Ian Hamilton, Gavin Vernon, Kay Matheson and Alan Stuart, members of the home rule-supporting Scottish Covenant Association, drove to
Westminster and stole the stone under cover of darkness. As they were removing it, the stone fell and broke into two pieces.
It’s believed the stone was cracked in 1914 when Suffragettes exploded a bomb that damaged the top of the coronation chair, but the damage only became apparent when the students moved it 36 years later. Upon the discovery of the theft, the border between Scotland and England was closed for the first time in 400 years and the students were forced to lay low. Once they returned north they hired a stonemason to repair the damage.
Afterwards, not knowing what to do with it, they dropped it off at Arbroath Abbey in April 1951. They were never charged for the theft, with authorities fearing the matter would become too politicised. A film was made about the theft in 2008, called Stone Of Destiny, starring Robert Carlyle, Kate Mara and Charlie Cox.
There was another, lesser-known, attempted theft in the late 1970s, again by a Glasgow student. It prompted the Abbey’s Surveyor of Fabric to place a small lead tube containing an offcut from an official authentication document into the side of the stone to prove its authenticity. The stone was moved from Westminster Abbey to Edinburgh Castle on St Andrew’s Day 1996. Rumours have lingered since the 1950 theft that the stone returned to England months later was not the same one as had been stolen from Westminster.
But two years after the stone was moved to Edinburgh, British Geological Survey staff conducted an examination of the stone and found it to be made from the same old red sandstone quarried near Scone.
A survey was recently conducted on whether the stone should remain at Edinburgh Castle or move to a new visitor centre in Perth.