The Leper Stone

Today is warm, dry and overcast, but still a good day for a walk and I really do need the exercise. So Mrs GOG, who has become interested in geocaching and I walked to the end of our village. She was looking for a geocache, hence the GPS receiver. The cache was at the Leper Stone, a glacial boulder left behind from the last Ice Age and named after its function in the middle ages. The story was that there was a leper colony just outside of the village and lepers were not permitted closer to the village than this stone, food for them being taken to the stone and deposited there for their collection. However, there is no evidence to support this story, St Leonard's hospital was near this site, but recovered bones show no sign of leprosy. The picture is taken looking North along the B1383, which was the old A11, prior to the building of the M11.