Page:Devon & Cornwall Notes & Queries.djvu/424

 Of Dartmoor and its Borderland. 55 it crosses an old working of the tin-miners, known as Green- "well Girt. Its sides are so overgrown with heather and fern that it would almost appear to one unaccustomed to viewing the remains of the old tinners' operations to be a naturally formed combe. It acts as a dividing hne between Greenwell Down and Wigford Down, and can be traced for a consider- able distance. It is carried down the hill towards Hooe Meavy, the lower part being planted with trees, forming a delightful avenue, and now known as Shady Combe. Crossing this extensive working, we shall observe on a bank, close by the way, a stone that once supported a cross. In shape it is octagonal, but it is rather rudely cut. Four of its sides are perpendicular, the others slightly sloping. It is three feet across, and its greatest thickness is sixteen inches. This can be seen, as the low bank has slipped from beneath a part of it, so that it overhangs the side of the road, above which it is raised some four feet. The socket is five inches deep, and is very nearly square, being eleven and a half inches by ten and a half. As there is a hedge on the other side of the road that encloses some cultivated land, it is not unlikely that the cross which was once fixed on this old base was removed from its position to do duty as a gate-post. Proceeding for a short distance we shall notice a rough track on our right, and striking into this shall cross the common in a south-westerly direction and so regain the road by which we entered on the down. This we shall follow until nearly reaching the gate that leads off the moor to Goodameavy. Here, by the roadside and opposite the gate of Urgles Farm, is the base of a cross. It is a large fiat stone, about a foot thick, not exactly circular, its edge in one place being broken, which gives it something of a kidney shape. Its greatest diameter is five feet. The socket that received the shaft is not quite in the centre. It measures eleven inches by nine, and is very shallow, being only a little over four inches in depth. There is no trace of the cross, nor have I been able to learn that anyone has ever seen it. In the preceding chapter we referred to a track over Wig- ford Down. This exists in the form of a green path, and may be followed from the cross near Cadaford Bridge to Urgles. Whatever the original purpose of the cross at the latter place may have been, it seems certain that one of its uses at all