The Buckstone Rocking Stone View all content for The Buckstone

Extract from "Old Stones of the Cotswolds and Forest of Dean" by D.P. Sullivan (1999 Reardon Publishing): A description of this natural rock was mentioned by Louis Jennings in Field and Green Lanes in 1878: "In the south-east, that curious rocking stone, the Buckstone, can be discerned, and there is a path from the Kymin to it, chiefly through woods or across fields. The site of the Buckstone is marked by a small flagstaff, a stone weighing hundreds of tons, yet poised upon a piece of rock scarcely two feet broad, like a huge top standing upon its peg. The hill runds down a thousand feet sheer below it, and the stone inclines over at an acute angle, and can be rocked by a strong man. An old fellow, whom I overtook on the common, told me that a frolicsome youth of Staunton had one night come up here armed with picks and crowbars, but could not move it. 'It is considered', this old man said to me, 'as it was washed there when the world was drownded'." ..... It was at one time believed to have been a rocking or 'logan' stone, 'placed in its present position by Druidical agency', and that it was possible, with apparent ease, to push the massive boulder to and fro on its point. The continuing onslaught of the elements, which fashioned this curiosity out of the softer surrounding strata, eventually wore away at the pivot preventing further rocking of the Buckstone. Various attempts, over the years, to get the stone to move resulted in its being dislodged in 1885. It toppled over, breaking into several pieces. Local worthies set about restoring the Buckstone and it was reconstituted and set back on its pivot by the insertion of a steel reinforcing rod. Further movement of the stone has been permanently arrested.

Posted by thesweetcheat 23rd December 2010ce

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