The Stag Stone at Stag St. Martins

The Stag Stone at Stag St. Martins: Place Post 15

The Stag Stone at Stag St. Martins is a standing stone of time-out-of-mind antiquity. It stands three or four km from the blink-and-you'll-miss-it village, which is somewhere in England. You could look it up if you like, but you won't find it. It appears in nineteenth century guidebooks, but the rail has gone, the motorway doesn't go there and when the sign to Flurry Bridge blew down nobody noticed for months. If you get to the village it's probably by mistake. Even then you might be surprised to find a mossy-stoned churchyard with three ancient yews and grassy hummocks where the church used to be. You might want to try a metal detector but you'd soon give up after the fifteenth bottle cap.

The Stag Stone has no signpost. It used to have one but it went the way of the one at the Flurry Bridge. Rumour has it someone nicked it as a prop at a stag party. It might still be propped in the garage of the best man. The way to the stone is one of those tracks that wanders and branches and changes its mind. If you do get there, you'll find the stone hip deep in grass. It would be worth a photograph if the background wasn't cluttered. It's shaped like a rough doorway and carved from one piece of stone. In the place that would be the lintel if it was a construction like Stone Henge, there's the black outline of a stag. It's not painted, or carved. No one seems to know what it is. Obsidian is the general opinion but no one is going to let you chip off a piece to see.

You can walk right through if you like. Tradition says if you go with someone else you should be holding hands, just in case. So that's the Stag Stone. Step through as often as you like. It has been said some folk step through and disappear. You don't want to believe everything you hear though, right?