44 ^^ Ancicfit Stone Crosses. to those places, as we shall shortly see, was marked by a line of crosses. It runs over the moor and extends to Tavistock, and though not the most direct route from Plympton to that town, we can readily understand, as it passed through the abbey manors, was the one generally used by the brothers of the priory when they desired to visit the great Benedictine house on the Tavy. The monks of the latter probably alsa often used it when journeying to Plympton or to their manor of Plymstock; indeed, there is every probability that in early times it was a much frequented track. With the object of examining the crosses on it, it will be necessary that we trace the road to Tavistock, but for the present we shall follow it only to the village of Meavy. We therefore, leave the church of St. Mary and make our way up the right bank of the Torry, a stream rising on the moor under Pen Beacon, and which we crossed near its source^ when on our way to Lee Moor. At Plympton it is spanned by two bridges, one near the church we have just been noticing, and the other a short distance further up. A few yards below the latter, and in the bed of the little river, but quite close to its left bank is the shaft of a cross fixed into a socket-stone. The former is almost covered with vegetation, and were it not that the outer side of the square block of granite in which the socket is cut has escaped being overgrown through the water constantly washing it, the whole would be undiscernible. This stone, and even the shaft of the cross itself, is partly built into a garden wall that abuts on the river. The head and arms of the cross are gone. The shaft is very similar in shape to that of the Plympton St. Maurice Cross, though it is not of so great a height, but it is probable that a portion of it has been broken off. It is five feet three inches high, and at the bottom where it fits into the socket is square. The corners are, however, chamfered almost close down to the stone, so that it is really octagonal, the sides of this figiu'e measuring five and a half inches each. The socket-stone has been carefully worked. It is twenty-one inches high and four feet long, but being built into the wall its exact breadth cannot be seen ; its upper edges are bevelled. The situation of this cross on the very verge of a stream would seem to point to its having marked a fording-place.
