staddle stone

English

Alternative forms

• steddle stone

Noun

staddle stone (plural staddle stones)

1. One of the mushroom-shaped stones used as a support for a barn (or staddle). The shape prevents rats from climbing up to the barn.
   • 1983, Barry Cunliffe, chapter 6, in Danebury Hillfort, Stroud: Tempus:

     [I]solate the body of the building from the ground […] embodied in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century granaries, built on staddle stones, which still survive in many English farmyards.

Related terms

• standing stone

 

See also

• stilt