The Stones of Newport

The landscape of Newport, where I live, owes much to geology. During the Anglian Ice Age, vast sheets of ice covered the country almost as far as London, and certainly covered this part of what is now north-west Essex.   As the ice formed and retreated, it cut valleys into the underlying rocks, leaving gently undulating hills covered in boulder clay, and streams, rivers and ponds in the valley floors. The ice also left large stone boulders known as ‘glacial erratics’ which can still be found dotted around and about – silent mementoes of an insanely distant past.

These pictures show two roadside examples from Newport. The first is the distinctively shaped sandstone 'sarsen' stone known as the ‘Leper Stone’, which stands by the side of the village’s main street, the modern-day B1383.  It is the largest standing stone in Essex. Its name derives from its proximity to the site of St Leonard’s Hospital, a medieval lay establishment founded by Richard de Newporte during the reign of King John (1199-1216). 19^th -century antiquaries speculated that the hospital was devoted to the cure of leprosy, owing to the belief that lepers would leave money in a hollow in the stone in return for food. But there is no evidence to suggest that the hospital was specifically devoted to leprosy – so the story is likely to be more myth than fact.

The other erratic lies to the side of the road that leads to the station. Unlike the Leper Stone, it is a puddingstone – ‘a conglomerate of flints and other pebbles in a sandstone matrix like raisins in a pudding’.  Rather brilliantly, both stones are featured on The Megalithic Portal, as examples of Essex’s ‘sacred stones’.

These stones are often anonymous and unassuming – these days, you might entirely miss them if you weren’t looking for them. Farmers have often moved them around, hence the fact that they are often found at the edge of roads or on corners. Presumably, they made excellent marker points for communities defining their local patch – the sort of thing that Nicola Whyte talks about in her book Inhabiting the Landscape. (On a similar theme, I am looking forward to reading Alexandra Walsham’s The Reformation of the Landscape, looking at the spiritual significance of local landscapes.) 

As far as I know, such stones are entirely unprotected – you can’t ‘list’ or ‘schedule’ them. But then, they’ve been there a while, and they aren’t going anywhere soon.