Page:Devon & Cornwall Notes & Queries.djvu/383

 20 The Ancient Stone Crosses stream is a craggy hollow, though we can see little of it, from which the river issues. It there falls in a series of small cascades and widely spreading rivulets over a number of rocky ledges, placed at the head of the solitary glen. From Buckland Ford we shall follow the Abbots' Way to the Avon, and tracing the river downward shall cross it at another ford, at a spot known to the moormen as Lower Huntingdon Corner, immediately above the con- fluence of the* stream with the Western Wellabrook. It is here the inquisition says, the fourth cross was set up, and we shall be gratified at observing it standing erect a few yards from the bank of the river. It is now known as Huntingdon Cross, and is situated at the comer of the warren. It is immediately within the forest bounds, and close to the spot where the parish of Lydford (in which the whole of the forest lies) joins the parishes of Dean and Brent. Although the crosses at Buckland Ford and Lower Hunt- ingdon Corner were claimed in 1557 as marking the boundary of Brent Moor, it is not at all probable that such was their original purpose. That, there is little doubt, was to mark the Abbots* Way, and they were adapted later as boundary stones But it is, nevertheless, certain that Brent Moor never ex- tended to Buckland Ford. The Perambulation of 1240 and the Survey of 1609 ^^^^ show that the forest boundary line runs from the confluence of the Wellabrook and the Avon to Eastern Whitaburrow, and not directly to Western Whita- burrow, so that Buckland Ford would lie some way within the forest. The placing of the Brent boundary at the latter spot was simply an encroachment on the duchy property, of which there are a number of similar instances in other paats of the moor. The name Huntingdon is not improbably derived from anM^ water (in this particular instance the name of the river which here flows by) and dun^ a hill, i,e., the water hill, which cer- tainly commends itself as a very suitable apellation, for the latter is bounded on two sides by the Avon or Aune, and on a third by the Wellabrook. Huntingdon Cross is romantically situated in a kind of hollow, the rising ground surrounding it being covered with patches of heather, with here and there a grey boulder of