This paper examines the effective stress in indurated clay rock theoretically and experimentally. A stress concept is derived from the analysis of the microstructure and of the pore water in the highly-indurated Callovo-Oxfordian and Opalinus clay rocks, and subsequently validated by various experiments performed on these claystones. The concept suggests that the interparticle or effective stress in a dense clay–water system is transferred through both the adsorbed interparticle pore water in narrow pores and the solid–solid contact between non-clay mineral grains. The experiments show that the adsorbed pore water in the claystones is capable of bearing deviatoric effective stresses up to the failure strength. The applied stresses are for the most part or even totally transferred by the bound pore water, i.e. the swelling pressure in the interparticle bound pore water is almost equivalent to the effective stress. This stress concept provides a reasonable view to the nature of the effective stress in argillaceous rock and forms the fundamental basis for studies of the hydro-mechanical properties and processes in clay formations.