CURSED? MAGICAL? AN ANCIENT ROMAN ARTIFACT? IT'S ORIGINS ARE NOW LOST IN TIME
For five hundred years, possibly even two thousand years, the "London Stone' has held its place in the financial heart of England's biggest city.
Last century, it was an historic link with the ancient past holding pride of place in the wall of a church.
Today, the church is gone, but the 'London Stone' has kept its place, now embedded in a cage in the wall of a sports store.
But the owner of the store is proud of the 'Stone' and has built a display case for it inside the premises. He's had visitors from as far away as Australia who've sought out the 'Stone'.
It has grown in legend in recent years, and now the building in which its housed is going to be demolished, arguments are picking up about whether the stone should be permanently re-located to the Museum Of London, or if it should stay where it is, where it has long been.
There's a curse, you see, attached to the 'London Stone' and some people are nervous about what might happen if its permamently moved.
It is viewed as one of the great relics of the Middle Ages, in a city that has lost so many of its past centuries' buildings and features. The 'Stone' was mentioned in the fiction of Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and William Blake, amongst the many authors who have paid it homage.
So where did it come from? How old is it? What is the curse all about?
More from the BBC Magazine :Protecting the stone might not be such a bad idea - since there is a legend that, like the ravens at the Tower of London, the fortune of the city is tied to the survival of the stone.
"So long as the stone of Brutus is safe, so long shall London flourish," says the proverb.
This relates to the myth that the stone was part of an altar built by Brutus the Trojan, the legendary founder of London. This might be unlikely, but then again no one really knows its origin.
...there is no way of confirming rival theories that it was a Roman distance marker or part of a prehistoric standing stone or any of the many more exotic myths.
The idea of sacred stones is a very ancient tradition - monarchs are still crowned on the Stone of Scone, the so-called "stone of destiny", in Westminster Abbey.
Queen Elizabeth I's adviser and occultist, John Dee, was obsessed by the stone, believing that it had magic powers.
Shakespeare depicted the 15th Century peasants' rebellion leader, Jack Cade, striking the London stone as a symbolic sign of taking control of the city.
Christopher Wren saw the foundations of the stone being excavated - and believed it to be part of a bigger Roman structure.
William Blake used the story that the stone had been part of a druid altar - reflecting another belief that it was from a pre-Roman religious stone circle on the site now occupied by St Paul's Cathedral.
The persistent story that the stone was the symbolic centre point from which every distance in Roman Britain was measured was already in circulation in the 16th Century.
But maybe the London stone's most remarkable achievement is to have survived at all - through wars, plagues, fires and even 1960s planning, right in the middle of the financial district of the capital.
It's probably still in a setting not too far from where it stood when the Romans were building London.
In 18th Century prints it was kept in an elegant stone casing - and there are photographs of Victorian police men guarding the stone, when it was set into the wall of a church at waist height.
This church, St Swithin, was damaged during a bombing raid during World War II - and the stone was then attached to a new building on the site.
But maybe the London stone's most remarkable achievement is to have survived at all - through wars, plagues, fires and even 1960s planning, right in the middle of the financial district of the capital.
It's probably still in a setting not too far from where it stood when the Romans were building London.
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