The Balloon Stone (Lunardi Monument)

The Balloon Stone, also known as the Lunardi Monument, is a monument located in Standon, erected around 1784. It was commissioned by William Baker of Bayfordbury to commemorate the hydrogen balloon flight by Vincent Lunardi on September 15, 1784. The monument features a large, ice-worn sandstone boulder, approximately 1.5 meters high and 1.5 meters wide at its base, which has been worked to form a vertical corner at the southeast. At the top of the stone, there is a triangular engraved copper plate with a hinged copper cover-plate. A small rectangular copper plate on the sloping southwest side notes the renewal of the top plate in 1875 for Mr. Giles Puller of Youngsbury. The monument is surrounded by a penannular cast iron railing with moulded standards and two horizontal plain bars. The inscription reads: "Let posterity know, and knowing be astonished, that on the 15th day of September 1784 Vincent Lunardi of Lucca in Tuscany, the first aerial traveller in Britain, mounting from the artillery ground in London and traversing the regions of the air for two hours and fifteen minutes, in this spot revisited the earth."