Ringing stones (or ringing rocks) are peculiar artefacts, which can be found all over the world, from the Lake District and Scottish Highlands to Western Australia and Pennsylvania, USA.
What are ringing stones or ringing rocks?
Ringing stones are naturally occurring musical rocks, which emit a metallic, bell-like chime when they are struck. They are a type of lithophone – a musical instrument consisting of rock that is struck to produce musical notes, similar to instruments such as the glockenspiel, vibraphone, xylophone and marimba.
Ringing rocks are often formed from dense, iron-rich diabase (the same type of rock that makes up most of the Earth's crust), which cooled slowly underground hundreds of millions of years ago, creating high internal stress.
The specific pitch of the rock depends on its shape, size and composition.
Where can you find ringing stones in the UK?
One such rock sits beside Old Military Road (A939) north of Gairnshiel Lodge in Scotland’s Cairngorms National Park. Known as the Ringing Stone, this silica-rich granite slab sounds like a bell when you bash it with a rock or hammer. It is slightly raised and hollow underneath, which may add to its resonance, but the exact mechanism by which these stones become sonorous is not fully understood.
There is another ringing stone on the Isle of Tiree in the Hebrides and a lithophone or stone xylophone at the Keswick Museum & Art Gallery in the Lake District.
Top image: The Ringing Stone on the Isle of Tiree (credit: Mike Shields/The Ringing Stone via Geograph/Wikicommons)
