Page:Devon & Cornwall Notes & Queries.djvu/512

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Of Dartmoor and its Borderland. 133 eight feet nine inches by eight feet six, and the upper one about four feet eleven inches by four feet seven. The two upper steps bear inscriptions on their fronts, from which we learn that the cross was erected by the rector and a parishioner in the sixtieth year of Queen Victoria. The parishioner is Mrs. Wood, of St. John's, Murchington, and the rector the Rev. George Lincoln Gambier Lowe, to whom not only the dwellers in this moorland parish, but all whose tastes lead them to regard the preservation of our antiquities as a thing to be desired, will feel themselves indebted. Not many years since the old base, which had been hollowed out to form a shallow trough (this being now filled with cement) was lying neglected near a horse-pond. Mr. Ormerod remembered when the fragments of two crosses, fastened together by an iron spike, stood on this base. One consisted of a portion of an octagonal shaft, two feet seven inches high, and the other of an upper portion of a cross of another pattern, from which one of the arms was missing, but when he saw it in 1872 this piece had been displaced, and was lying in the pond close by. In 1892 I learnt that these pieces, not being securely fixed, were thrown off by children when at play, and in order that they might not be further mutilated, and with a view to their being afterwards properly set up in their place, they were removed about 1880 by the rector. Nothing more was done, however, and the pieces could not afterwards be found. The cross originally stood, it is believed, in the church- yard, and fell into a ruinous condition about fifty years ago. Repairs were about that time being carried out, and it is said that the mason built some of the fragments of the cross into a wall. Throwleigh Church is close at hand, built, like all the border sanctuaries, of the durable granite of the moor. It possesses a remarkably fine priest's doorway. Our course will next take us along the Chagford road as (^ Ni Jfc far as Wonston . whence we may diverge if we please, in order to visit Gidleigh, which is about a mile distant. We shall ^vA ^V^ find there a little church, an old manor house, a diminutive f pound, and the ruins of a castle, the latter, however, not being very extensive. The place wears a very prim- itive air, and for the lover of all that is old-fashioned will