Scone was a place of power long before Christianity arrived. Archaeological surveys conducted in 2007 confirmed what historians had long suspected: the site held real significance even before 841 AD, when Kenneth MacAlpin is said to have brought the Stone of Destiny here from western Scotland. The Culdees -- those mysterious 'Companions of God' who practiced an austere form of Celtic worship -- may have been present at Scone from as early as 700 AD, though very little is known about their practices or organization. What is clear is that the Moot Hill, the low artificial mound at Scone, was not merely a convenient hillock. Excavation revealed it had been surrounded at some point by a ditch and palisade, marking it out not as a defensive position but as a sanctum -- a bounded sacred space within which kings made their vows to the people of Scotland.

The priory was formally established between 1114 and 1122, when six Augustinian canons arrived from Nostell Priory in West Yorkshire under the leadership of Prior Robert, who later became Bishop of St Andrews. The foundation charter, dated 1120, was long suspected of being a forgery but is now regarded as a late twelfth-century copy -- possibly made after a fire destroyed the original sometime before 1163. In December 1164, during the reign of Malcolm IV, the priory was elevated to abbey status. A stylised illustration on one of the abbey's seals suggests it was a substantial Romanesque building, with a central tower crowned by a spire. The records suffered further destruction during the Wars of Scottish Independence, but the abbey's importance never diminished. Robert the Bruce was crowned at Scone in 1306, and coronations continued here for another three and a half centuries.

The final coronation at Scone took place on 1 January 1651, when Charles II accepted the Scottish crown -- the last king to be crowned on Scottish soil before the union of the crowns rendered the ceremony redundant. By then the abbey itself had been in ruins for nearly a century. In 1559, during the early convulsions of the Scottish Reformation, a mob from Dundee -- whipped into zealous fury by the preaching of John Knox -- descended on Scone and burned the abbey to the ground. The destruction was thorough. In 1581, the site was converted into a temporal lordship, and what remained of the buildings was gradually dismantled. A 2008 archaeological dig at the abbey site revealed burials with three complete human skeletons -- among the burials already known are Robert II of Scotland and Maud, Countess of Huntingdon.

The Stone of Destiny had been removed from Scone by Edward I of England in 1296 and taken to Westminster Abbey, where it sat beneath the coronation chair for seven centuries. It was briefly stolen by Scottish nationalists in 1950 and returned in 1996 to Edinburgh Castle. It is now displayed at Perth Museum, a few miles from the site where it once determined the legitimacy of kings. The abbey itself is gone, but the Moot Hill remains, and Scone Palace -- the later mansion built nearby -- stands on the grounds. The geophysical surveys revealed the abbey to have been somewhat larger than previously imagined, and established that the site's significance predated the Christian era. Beneath the manicured grounds of a Perthshire estate lies one of Scotland's most important archaeological sites: the place where a nation's kings received their authority, on a mound that was ancient before the first stone of the abbey was laid.