6o The Ancunt Stone Crosses a brief space. It has the appearance of a socket stone of a cross and may indeed be such. It is about three feet square, but in place of the ordinary socket of a few inches deep, the centre is pierced entirely through. This of itself, though certainly unusual, would not be a sufficient reason for ques- tioning its character, but there are other circumstances that afford some grounds for doing so. As we shall shortly see, there are two other stones a few miles distant, precisely similar, and situated, if not so near as is this, yet not very far from the old disused Dartmoor tramway, and it has occurred to me that they may have been brought by means of it to the localities where we now see them, and instead of being socket-stones of crosses, may be something much more modern and prosaic. That a number of large stones were on one occasion brought on the waggons and unloaded at this very spot, we are old enough to remember. It was for the purpose of throwing a barricade across the road, then recently constructed, and relative to which there was a dispute. Against this we have to set the fact that not only is this stone, and the two others alluded to, situated just where we should expect to find a cross, but also that there does exist an undoubted example of the socket-stone of a Dartmoor cross being pierced through. This w^ill come under our notice in a succeeding chapter, and when we have seen all these stones we may perhaps think that after all we shall be right in regarding them as bases that once supported crosses. We shall then have excellent grounds for believing that we can fix the approximate site of another of the boundary marks- mentioned in the deed of Amicia ; that we see, in ^ct, in this stone near Roborough the base of the ancient Copriscrosse. That it stood on this road is certain. The boundary of the manor, or parish, as we have said is conterminous with it, and the words of the deed are also clear, for it describes it as running from Wool well " per viam quae ducit de Sutton ad. Tavistock ad Copriscrosse." By this road we shall now make our way to Roborough Down, and shortly after passing the entrance to Maristowe shall turn into the Buckland road on the left. Noticing the grounds of Bickham as we proceed, we soon reach one of the entrances to the abbey demesne, near which we can look
