The historic Glenfinnan Stone is a foot across and has a hole cut into it allegedly to support the standard of Bonnie Prince Charlie when he raised it at Glenfinnan on Monday 19 August 1745, launching the second Jacobite rebellion.

In 1989 the stone vanished from where it had always lain, on a mound near the monument at Glenfinnan at the head of Loch Shiel.

The stone and its disappearance was mentioned to presenter Ben Fogle in a episode of the BBC’s Countryfile programe by Iain Thornber, a local historian from Lochaline in Morvern, across from Argyll’s Isle of Mull and in the same land mass as Glenfinnan.

Two weeks after the transmission of the programme the BBC received a letter which they passed on to Iain Thorber. It was from a woman who had seen the show while on holiday in Skye but was herself from Hartlepool. She had the stone in her rockery there but had not known what it was or where it had come from.

It has emerged that the stone was taken from Glenfinnan and domesticated in a rockery somewhere in Scotland, from where it was passed on to the Hartlepool lady for her own rockery. After making contact with Iain Thornber when she found out about the stone on Countryfile, she has voluntarily returned it.

The West Highland  Museum in Fort William, custodian of several Jacobite relics, will house the Glenfinnan Stone until, according to Iain Thornber, arrangements for its secure display in its own place can be made with the Roman Catholic Church which owns the Glenfinnan site.

The photograph of Genfinnan above is by Flaxton and is reproduced here under the Creative Commons licence.