The Leper Stone or Newport Stone () is a large

sarsen Sarsen stones are silicified sandstone blocks found in quantity in Southern England on Salisbury Plain and the Marlborough Downs in Wiltshire; in Kent; and in smaller quantities in Berkshire, Essex, Oxfordshire, Dorset, and Hampshire. Geology ...

stone near the village of

Newport, Essex Newport is a large village in Essex near Saffron Walden. The village has a population of over 2,000, measured at 2,352 at the 2011 census. Located approximately 41 miles (66 kilometres) north of London, the village is situated amongst the a ...

, England. The name ''Leper Stone'' probably derives from the hospital of St. Mary and St. Leonard (fn. 1156?), a nearby hospital for

lepers Leprosy, also known as Hansen's disease (HD), is a long-term infection by the bacteria ''Mycobacterium leprae'' or ''Mycobacterium lepromatosis''. Infection can lead to damage of the nerves, respiratory tract, skin, and eyes. This nerve dama ...

. Passers by could have left offerings of alms for the hospital residents in a small depression atop the stone; the hospital grounds were sold in the sixteenth century, and only a portion of the wall near the stone remains. Julian Cope, Peter Herring, UK

Geocaching Geocaching is an outdoor recreational activity, in which participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or mobile device and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called "geocaches" or "caches", at specific l ...

along with D.G. Buckley and Ken Newton's paper for the Council of British Archaeology have suggested that the Leper Stone was set vertically in the ground as a megalithic

menhir A menhir (from Brittonic languages: ''maen'' or ''men'', "stone" and ''hir'' or ''hîr'', "long"), standing stone, orthostat, or lith is a large human-made upright stone, typically dating from the European middle Bronze Age. They can be found ...

or standing stone.Herring, Peter., The Sacred Stones Of Essex - Article for The Megalithic Portal
/ref> J.D. Hedges report of 1980 also classified it as a standing stone for English Heritage, who describe this type of monument as ''A stone or boulder which has been deliberately set upright in the ground''. Similarly it has been described as a

monolith A monolith is a geological feature consisting of a single massive stone or rock, such as some mountains. For instance, Savandurga mountain is a monolith mountain in India. Erosion usually exposes the geological formations, which are often ma ...

by the Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian society.

References

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