52 The Ancient Stone Crosses CHAPTER VI. The Crosses of Meavy* The Meavy Oak — A Missing VilLi.;ic Cross— Its Discovery and Restora- tion— Mcavy Cluirch — Cross in Wall of Transept — Tomb of Lady Seccombc— Tomb of Walter Mattacott—Gratton— Chapel of St. Matthew — Greenwell Down — Greenwell Girt — Base of a Wayside Cross— Ufiiles—Wigford Down— An Old Path. Having followed the Monk's road from Plympton to the Mew, and noticed the crosses by which it was marked, we shall leave it for the present in order to visit Meavy^ which, was one of the possessions of Plympton Priory. From the cross at the foot of Lynch Hill Ave proceed to Marchants Bridge near at hand, beneath which flows the Mew as it emerges from its leafy screen, and crossing it shall make our way by a lane to the little village. Here, a most pleasing picture meets our view. An open green, with a noble old oak, whose boughs, as though to protect it, are flung over an ancient granite cross, reared almost close to its trunk ; and quite near to both, the gate of that sacred spot where
- ' The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep."
The trunk of the tree is hollow, and in a note to Carrington's poem of Dartmoor, published in 1826, it is stated on the authority of the hostess of the village inn, that nine persons once dined in the cavity. Thouojh it is now but a mere shell, yet the branches put forth their leaves in due season, and it is to be hoped that the day is far distant when the shadow of
- Meavy's venerable oak ** shall cease to fall across the village
green. For more than a hundred years the Meavy cross was missing from its place beneath the tree. Whither it had dis- appeared no man knew, but the base and pedestal told where it once had been. That it would ever be discovered and set up in its old place was imagined by none ; but that this was at length the case, all who are interested in the preservation of our antiquities will rejoice to learn.
