Roll Away the Stone

This is a staddle stone, originally used to raise wooden structures like granaries off the ground. Not only to allow air circulation, but the mushroom tops prevented rodents climbing up and getting in to the grain.
You may wonder what something like that is doing in a Cumbrian garden. The answer is to do with childhood and memories. We had to sell Mrs C’s childhood home when her mother went into care. Her parents had lived there for over sixty years and the garden was full of rustic objects accumulated over the decades. The sorts of things that are now referred to as “architectural salvage” with a price tag to match.
Obviously, we couldn’t take everything but a couple of stone troughs and a cast iron table had already found their way north during the house clearance process. Mrs C really wanted one of the staddle stones though, to remind her not only of the house but the lovely garden her dad had created and that she used to play in.
So the car was emptied and I braced myself for a hernia! This a serious chunk of sandstone we’re talking about here and the car was definitely squatting down a bit at the rear by the time I’d busted a gut lifting it into the boot!
During the tidying of the garden this week, it was decided to move it from its original resting place (basically, as close to where the car was parked as possible!) and site it a bit more “aesthetically pleasing”. Thankfully, the last two years worth of gym sessions had obviously paid off as it didn’t seem to be quite as heavy as I remembered! As it’s new home is amongst the bushes, I snapped this when it was halfway through the move so it can be viewed in all its glory.