Of Dartmoor and its BorderlarJ. 13 upright stones. This row extends from Butterdon Hill, near the Western Beacon above Ivybridge, to within a short distance of Sharp Tor, which overlooks the enclosure known as Piles Newtake. At the former place it is seen leading directly from a circle thirty*five feet in diameter, of which the stones, with the exception of two (and those partially so) are fallen. This encloses a small cairn about twenty feet in diameter, much dilapidated. It has been supposed that the old map in question dates back as far as 1240, in which year a perambulation of the forest was madd, or even earlier; but, as Mr. J. Brooking Rowe points out in his Cistercian Houses of Devotiy^ this cannot be the case, because on it there is a representation of the Abbey Church of Buckland, which abbey was not founded until 1278. He considers it to be of two centuries later date. Further on, I shall bring forward some evidence which I think will show that this view is the more correct one ; but without going into this question now, it certainly appears from the map that a cross was standing in the stone-row at the time it was drawn, but I am not so sure that it was ever fixed on steps as it is there represented. Another cross, which we shall notice hereafter, is shown on the map as standing on steps in the same manner, although nothing of the sort is to be seen near it now, so that it is possible that this was no more than a conventional mode of the draughtsman to indicate the existence of these crosses, and it was not, perhaps, in- tended, or considered necessary, to convey a perfectly correct idea of their form. Mr. Bate accounts for the cross being erected in the stone-row on the hypothesis that those who reared it, finding the dark clouds of superstition clinging to the heathen relic, were anxious to plant the symbol of Christianity amid the rude erections of the Pagans. This, indeed, may have been the case, but I am inclined to think it quite as probable that the cross was set up simply as a boundary mark. When the object for which the stone-row was primarily erected was forgotten, it was naturally looked upon as a boundary, and still continues to serve as such, constituting, as far as it extends, the line which divides Ugborough and Harford
- Tranii. Devon Assoc, Vol. vii., p. 345.
