A generalised referential stress tensor has been identified, its definition involving the Cauchy stress tensor raised to some power n. The proposed measures of referential stress, for any n, are concerned exclusively with the reference configuration. The first referential stess tensor, \((n=1)\), is the classical second Piola-Kirchhoff stress tensor. By considering the contact force on a surface element, it is shown that only the second referential stress tensor, \((n=2)\), has physical significance. As an example, the second referential stress tensor is used to obtain a referential description of the constitutive equation for a simple elastic solid.