CORONATION STONE

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26397, 16 April 1951, Page 7

CORONATION STONE

SECRET REPOSITORY IN ABBEY (Rec. 9 p.m.) LONDON, April 14. The Coronation Stone was returned to Westminster Abbey last night It was stolen by Scottish nationalists on December 25, 1950. The Stone was brought from Glasgow in a police car. The police, after a 15-hour journey from Scotland, replaced it in the Abbey from which the Scottish nationalists stole it. A second carload of police guarded the relic as it was taken back through the Poets' Corner entrance of the Abbey. It was through this door that the Scotsmen carried it off. For the time being the Stone will stay in an undisclosed resting place. The Dean of Westminster <Dr. Alan Don) said: “It will not be replaced in the Coronation Chair until further notice." Police forcibly removed Miss Wendy Wood, president of the Scottish Patriots’ Association, when she tried to address a meeting in Trafalgar square to-day. She was half-dragged, half-carried from the Square by a police inspector and six constables, and taken to a police station in a commandeered Army vehicle. As the police closed in around her. Miss Wood shouted: “The Stone belongs to Scotland. We are going to have it again. We are going to have both the Stone and self-governm«,i.t before we are finished.” Scottish Association football supporters carried a replica of the Stone through the West End last night, to the accompaniment of cheers from kilted crowds behind them. Scots in full Highland dress played a bagpipe dirge. The imitation Stone is in sandstone. It is a perfect renlica of the real Stone, with a meta] ring. The replica wai placed on the Wembley football ground to-day, when Scotland beat England in an international match-