A small number of Scottish families own lost fragments of the Stone of Destiny—how?
Pieces of the prized British relic were chipped off during an 1950 heist. Now people are coming forward with those fragments—shedding new light on the stone's history.
It was just a tiny lump of stone without any noteworthy features to speak of. But it created a massive stir when the Scottish government released papers in 2024 revealing that the late former head of the Scottish government Alex Salmond had once possessed this sandstone fragment.
It wasn’t just any stone, after all. It was a piece of one of Britain’s most prized relics: the Stone of Destiny.
The ancient artifact, also called the Stone of Scone, was used as a “crowning seat” during Scottish kings’ inauguration ceremonies beginning in at least 1249. In 1296, King Edward I of England seized the stone from Scotland and had it mounted into a specially created seat, now known as the Coronation Chair. It has been used in nearly all English and British coronation ceremonies since, tucked under the monarch’s bottom.
This purloining by the English King turned the stone into a symbol for Scotland. “Edward wanted it because it showed that he'd conquered Scotland and he had the right to rule,” says Mark Hall, collections officer at Perth Museum in Scotland, where the Stone of Destiny is now on display. “The Scots wanted it back for the opposite reason.”
(The mysterious past of the Stone of Destiny.)
The revelation that Salmond had a sliver of the stone “created a right hoo ha,” in the press, says Sally Foster, emeritus professor at the University of Stirling in Scotland who researches archaeology and the meaning people assign to places and objects.
It was well known that fragments of the Stone of Destiny had chipped off or been collected over the centuries, some kept for study by geologists. But what most people didn’t know—and what Foster’s work since has helped uncover—is that at least 34 pieces of stone had been deliberately removed during one of the most famous heists in history.
In 1950, amid a rising fervor for home rule in Scotland, a group of college students broke into Westminster Abbey and stole the Stone back. This wasn’t just a university prank but a political statement. “It wasn’t stolen,” says Jamie Hamilton, whose late father Ian Hamilton led the heist. “It was repatriated.”
As the story goes, during the theft the stone fell and split along a historic crack—which was later repaired with help from Scottish politician and stonemason Robert “Bertie” Gray before it was returned to the British. As Gray later told Calgary Herald journalist Dick Sanburn, “when the stone was being repaired, a number of chips had to be taken off in order to fit the two pieces properly and smoothly together.”
Salmond’s scrap brought to light that Gray had not simply removed the chips—over the years, he had numbered them and given them out.
With the help of a little digging from Foster, stories of the fragments once hidden in archives have since come tumbling out as she traced their journeys across Scotland and beyond. She revealed some of those stories in November 2025 in The Antiquaries Journal—and now for the first time a new set of fragment holders have come forward to tell their stories.
The overlooked story of Bill Craig
For Mary Craig, the Stone of Scone isn’t just national legend—it’s also family lore. As a child, she often heard of the relic being taken from Westminster Abbey. Only when she was a little older did she learn that her father, Bill, had been key to the plot—even sitting on the sandstone block as his comrades whisked it back to Scotland.
The proof sits in an old typewriter tin in Mary’s home: small stone fragments with handwritten numbers on them. When Foster’s work became public, Mary Craig was among the people who came forward saying her family had been given fragments numbered 12, 13,14, and 24. She had a letter from Gray to prove it—although only three of those fragments remained in the family.
Bill Craig's involvement in the heist had remained secret for many years even after the other conspirators became widely known. Bill had gotten a new job in London and, not wanting to risk his career, he didn't talk openly about his role until some 20 years later, says Mary. This, she argues, is why the depth of his involvement has never been fully recognized.
“The story is always of four students going to Westminster Abbey,” says Mary, “but it started off with just two.”
Ian Hamilton and her father.
As Mary tells it, Ian and Bill plotted to steal the stone from Westminster Abbey to make a stand for home rule in Scotland through civil disobedience.
“Then at the last minute, Ian said, ‘We're going this weekend,’” she says—Christmas morning. As president of the Students Union, Bill was committed to too many meetings. Fearing that canceling them at the last minute would throw suspicion on him when the Stone vanished, Bill pulled out of the plan. Ian went ahead with three other students.
(The Louvre has a wild history of being robbed in broad daylight.)
They had already anticipated that they wouldn’t be able to cross back from England to Scotland once the feat was accomplished. “They weren't as naive as the average student,” says Mary. The plan was to drive south instead and bury the stone in Kent then retrieve it when the coast was clear. Mary believes this part of the plan was down to her father. “He was the rational, cautious one,” she says.
They were right to be wary. After the stone was reported missing, the border was closed for the first time in 400 years.
Around a week later, Bill joined the four original conspirators to return to the burial site—and found travelers camped right on top. The students sweet-talked the campers into letting them take the stone—and Mary believes it was quick-witted Bill who led that charge by “talking to them about political freedom and all the things we fought the war for,” she says.
The stone wouldn't fit in the trunk of the students’ car so they squeezed it in the passenger seat, with Bill perched on top. “So for most of the journey back, Bill was sitting on the Stone of Destiny, very uncomfortably,” she says.
This probably makes him one of the three most recent people to sit on it, muses Mary: "The Queen and Prince Charles. He was the one before that."
This is the first time Mary has discussed her father’s fragments—which she says Gray sent to her father in the same typewriter tin that once sat in the Scottish politician’s office. “In his life, it must have been one of his biggest adventures,” she says, adding that she and her family want him to be better recognized for his pivotal role in the heist.
Foster agrees. “Craig was utterly pivotal,” she says. “He just didn't get all the credit at the time that was due to him, or perhaps since.”
The curious case of Reverend Ewen Traill’s fragment
Mary Craig had been among the first people to contact Foster after her research about the Stone of Destiny fragments came to light through a media interview. So Foster was puzzled when another family then approached her saying their father Ewen had number 14—the same fragment that Gray had given to Bill Craig.
Reverend Ewen Traill is thought to have gotten his hands on a national relic before: William Wallace’s sword. Local legend holds that Traill, a member of the Scottish National Covenant movement, stole the sword from the National Wallace Monument in 1936. His daughter Carolyn even told the Orkney News many years later that the act was driven by “the idea of flourishing it during a debate about Scottish Independence.” (The sword was indeed stolen by nationalist students and subsequently returned yet there’s no public record of who actually did the deed.)
When the Stone of Destiny vanished, Ewen was a natural place to turn—for both the authorities and the conspirators. Ewen’s son Wallace Traill says he’s always heard a story that the authorities arrived early one morning with a warrant to search the Reverend’s land for the missing relic. “My father just—allegedly, according to the story—handed them a shovel and said, ‘there you are: six acres. Go dig.’”
His younger sister Carolyn doesn’t recall any police suspicion. But both siblings tell National Geographic they believe their father was indeed asked to help hide the artifact. Wallace says his father considered tucking it under the communion table in his church but his wife was having none of it. “My mother put her foot down very, very firmly,” he says. (However, Carolyn remembers her mother later "often said that she bitterly regretted" forbidding him from helping.)
If Ewen refused to hide the stone, how did he come to own one of Bill Craig’s fragments? Mary Craig’s childhood memories helped Foster solve the puzzle.
As a child, Mary recalls a lovely day visiting a church minister she didn’t know. “We knew that they were university friends of my father's,” she recalls. “And, later on, I think maybe we knew that he had stolen Wallace's sword.” When she asked if they would visit again, Mary’s mother said no: the man was going to take up ministry in Orkney.
Mary believes this is when Bill gave number 14 to Ewen “as a kind of talisman.” Ewen was moving to the Orkney Islands off the northeastern coast of Scotland to support an island community devastated by the tragic Longhope disaster of 1969. Orkney had lost one third of its tiny population overnight when a lifeboat crew lost their lives attempting to rescue a steamship during an intense storm.
(What the Orkney Islands reveal about the U.K.’s ancient past.)
Giving Ewen one of his fragments “seems to have been a very kind of moving and highly symbolic gesture on his part,” says Foster of the new finding.
Although Ewen Traill was “fiercely proud of holding a bit of Scottish history,” Wallace says the family kept their chip secret from all but their nearest and dearest for a long time. “It was like smoking marijuana in your living room in 1974—you drew the curtains,” he says.
Following the fragments
The Stone of Destiny was ultimately returned to England—left for the authorities to find in 1951 on the High Altar at Arbroath Abbey, an important site in the fight for recognition of Scotland’s independence. Although there’s no record of who returned the stone, Mary alleges that it was Bill, Ian, and one other conspirator. “The people who started the plot took it back.”
But the fragments traveled on their own paths. “The stone itself is a nucleus and the fragments are the diaspora,” says Jamie Hamilton, son of Ian Hamilton.
Ian set his fragment in a silver brooch and gave it to his wife for her 21st birthday. Jamie—now an archaeologist—thinks it’s likely that his father stole the chunk of stone himself, rather than being gifted it by Gray. “He would certainly have no qualms about trousering a piece, sticking it in his pocket,” he says.
Foster has also obtained stories of one fragment owned by Scottish politician Winnie Ewing, who even wore it in a locket during a TV interview. Another ended up in the Queensland Museum in Brisbane after Bertie Gray gifted it to an Australian tourist.
Geology can help prove the provenance of the fragments, but only to a point. Geologists can confirm that a piece cannot possibly be from the Stone but there’s no way of testing for sure that a fragment of sandstone came from this particular stone.
Instead, Foster has been able to validate some of these paths in part because Bertie Gray had the foresight to issue certificates of authenticity with some of them. “These will be, later, precious relics, carefully numbered and recorded to prevent a flood of fakes,” he told Calgary Herald journalist Dick Sanburn (yet another recipient of a fragment).
It was only when Foster heard from Mary that she realized Gray physically wrote numbers on some of the key pieces too.
“The stories that are coming through to me, they fit,” Foster says.
The future of the fragments
What should happen to the pieces now their stories have come to light? Hall would love to see the pieces displayed alongside the stone at Perth Museum while Foster’s work raises questions about whether it makes more sense to have them scattered across several institutions.
Many families, however, want these cherished heirlooms to be handed down through the generations.
Wallace’s chip will pass to his son, under two strict conditions: It must not leave Scotland and cannot be sold under any circumstance.
Jamie’s lump will likely be handed down to his son too. When a fire alarm went off in their building, the 11-year-old immediately thought of saving the fragment—second to his Legos.
What's next for the Craig family's fragments is unclear. “What do you do with a little scrap of sand?” says Mary. Her family has three shards but four children in the next generation. “There aren't enough pieces to go around.”
For Jamie, wherever the pieces end up, it’s what they symbolize that’s important: the Scottish identity and the country’s fight for independence. He says: “The whole Scottish independence argument is now up to the people of Scotland—particularly the young people—to make their decisions.”
