Standon Pudding Stone

Nearest town:
Ware (8km SSW)
OS reference:
TL395222
OS sheet:
166
Latitude:
51° 52' 49.41 N
Longitude:
0° 1' 36.95 E
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Standon Pudding Stone

C
CARL May 25, 2015

Visited 24.5.15

Directions:
Next to Paper Mill Lane (near the church). Can’t really miss it. Plenty of parking.

My second ‘Pudding Stone’ in as many days! This one is even better than the first. It has a nice setting on a small green, next to a lovely oak tree. An information board and bench have been kindly provided. The stone sits on a conical flint built stand – nicely done.

Standon is a very pretty village with an attractive church. This, coupled with the stone itself, makes it a good place to visit if you happen to be in the area.

Standon Pudding Stone

Earthstepper
Earthstepper Sep 2, 2003

This stone looks like a palaeolithic venus figure to me and I wonder if it hasn’t been partly shaped by man. Situated opposite the church and at the head of the lane leading to a deep ford, it is garlanded on May Day when the villagers commence a procession and hold their fete in the main street. Very good show every year and worth a visit.

Standon Pudding Stone

ocifant
ocifant May 11, 2003

Just around the corner from the village church, this was idyllic on a sunny Sunday morning. Villagers were cutting the lawn and gossiping over the hedge, giving a wonderful picture of rural village life.

The stone sits next to a memorial oak on a small green at a junction off the main High Street through the village. The information sign could do with a good clean (see photo), and the stone looks as if it’s had a bit knocked off the top. It looks for all the world like a piece of modern sculpture in its shape. Interesting texture and well worth seeing if you’re in the area.

Folklore

Standon Pudding Stone
Standing Stone / Menhir
Rhiannon
Rhiannon Jul 25, 2002

Ben Colman / Mark Ynys Mon’s site at
druidic.org/visits/churches/12.05.02/pages/Standon-stone2.htm
gives a picture of the stone in its current spot (and don’t miss the wicked romanesque font in the nearby church, also a picture on the site – sorry but I can’t help it)

Puddingstone – or Breeding / Mother stone – is made up of littler rocks conglomerated into one lump. Hertfordshire puddingstone is comprised of little pebbles. Apparently, if you take out one of the pebbles, another will grow back. Though I reckon that’d be quite difficult, because the matrix is so hard that the rock tends to split right through the lot – the pebbles aren’t like raisins in a cake.

It’s been speculated that puddingstones were used as track markers on the Icknield way, for example. Perhaps they were also used as sacred standing stones. From these tentative ideas some people have inferred that the common use of them in the foundations of churches was to continue the ‘sacred’ idea – building the old into the new. But I’m kind of inclined to think they may have just been seen as bloody good hard, decorative rocks with which to build. Who knows.

Topics

The Breeding Stone 10
TomBo
TomBo
Sep 2003

Sites within 20km of Standon Pudding Stone

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