The beautiful, ancient market town of Stone, located in the lovely county of Staffordshire, positively oozes history out of each and every corner. For one, Stone was once the capital of the ancient kingdom of Mercia. Mercia existed nearly fifteen hundred years ago and was once the sole power in the Midlands. Nobody is quite sure exactly how large the kingdom was because there was very little history written in those days. Mercia's reign is usually regarded as being between the mid 500s to the mid 800s and that places it right within the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages were referred to as such because there are very few bits of history from those days that is known today. Compared to the Greek and Roman recordings in the centuries before and the enlightened times after, many parts of the Dark Ages are lost forever and we will never know exactly what transpired. One fact that remains, however, is that Stone was a very important town in those formative years and continued to be so even after the demise of Mercia.
To this day the residents of Stone are still told the ancient tale (or myth, if you want to call it that) of how Stone came about. Supposedly the two sons of King Wulfhere of Mercia, Princes Ruffan and Wulfad, were killed by the king because they had converted to Christianity. It is said that the king had killed the princes in the year 665 and this is certainly plausible because monks from Lindisfarne had arrived in Mercia during the 650s when they were invited by the then King Penda. At any rate, the legend goes that Christians who had mourned the martyred princes gathered rocks from the nearby River Trent and then laid them on the graves of the deceased sons. It is very possible that this story is true because a church was built atop these rocks and the graves beneath in about 670. Sadly, this church can't be seen today because it was destroyed in the 800s by Danish invaders.
These days Stone is fully immersed in the present but there are plenty of areas in the town that reveal the long and rich history of the town. The canal that runs through the town flows from the River Trent and it looks much the same as it has for hundreds and hundreds of years. There are, however, plenty of new buildings and housing units built right up alongside the canal but it is hard to begrudge any modern day residents of the town for wanting to settle down in front of a stunning and gorgeous view. Stone wonderfully balances its rich past with the necessary infrastructure of a modern town and it should be seen as a basis for any other town that wishes to build itself up for the new era while still paying due homage to all the generations that came before. If only more towns used this model as their driving force for growth.
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