Page:Devon & Cornwall Notes & Queries.djvu/473

 98 The Ancient Stone Crosses feet or more in height were provided it might yet stand erect without danger of being overthrown. The shaft, as now repaired, is about five and a half feet long, but, as already observed, a portion of it is missing. It appears to have been of similar size to the cross beside which it was found, the width across the arms, before the fracture, being precisely the same, namely, two feet two inches. Immediately under the arms it is eleven inches wide, and above them narrows a little towards the top. Directing our steps to the other cross, we shall find it to be a very fine one, and in a complete state, with the exception of a slight injury to the shaft, a small piece having been broken off one of the corners. Its height is six feet six inches, as measured when it lay upon the turf ; its breadth across the arms has just been stated. The depth of these is nine inches, and from their upper surface to the top of the shaft the distance is thirteen inches. The width of the shaft is about ten inches, and the thickness of it about two inches less. Before setting it up we slightly deepened the socket, into which we placed cement, and made the stone firm in which it was cut. This is a block three feet three inches long, by two feet five inches wide. The late Mr. Coaker, of Sherburton, an estate situated on the tongue of land which is peninsulated by the Swincombe river and the West Dart, several years ago removed this cross, and set it up in the courtyard of his farm. But on this becoming known to the Duchy authorities he was obliged to restore it to its original site, and there it lay until its re-erection in 1885 The damage to the shaft, which for- tunately is only trifling, was probably done in removing it. The track, which the line of crosses we are noticing appears to mark, is here very plainly to be discerned. This is how- ever, owing in great measure to this part of the path having been used within the past hundred years. I have learned in the neighbourhood that when the farmhouse near Fox Tor was built, the timber used in it^ construction was drawn to the site by a yoke of oxen along this route, and that it is this nineteenth century tragic that we see the marks of now. The grass and the heather have, in many places, long since obliterated the traces of the passing to and fro of the early wayfarer, but the crosses which here and there are found prove