70 Tht Ancient Stone Crosses But our road will conduct us along the verge of the common and through enclosed lands to the secluded bordm: hamlet of Sampford Spiney, the last of the possessions of the Priory of Plyrapton met with on this road. Here is a very fine cross standing on the green, near the church, and also in proximity to the entrance to the old manor house. It formerly stood in the hedge near by, but was removed to its present more suitable situation by the ]a.te Rev. John Hall Parlby, of Manadon, near Plymouth, the lord of the manor. It is seven feet in height, and of a tapering* form, and is fixed into a socket cut in a large stone sunk into the ground. A few inches up the shaft the angles axe chamfered, as is the case also with the arms and head. The arms are the same in width as those of the cross we have just examined on Huckworthy Common. There is, however, no resemblance between the two, the latter being plainly fashioned and far more ancient than this cross, which is of sixteenth century type. The girth of the shaft at the bottom where the chamfering begins is two feet ten inches, and this diminishes to two feet three inches immediately under the arms : the head rises nine inches above the arms. The spacious green, with the church embosomed in trees, and the fine old manor house, with its arched doorways of granite, forms a most pleasing picture, and one truly characteristic of of the Dartmoor borders. It has been supposed that the name of the place is derived from spinetunij a thornbrake, and both Westcote and Risdon refer to this. But as it was anciently the possession of the family of Spinet or de Spineto, it is much more likely that Sampford owes its adjunct of Spiney to its lords. The hamlet is distant about four miles from Tavistock, the road to which town passes over the common under Pu Tor, to the northern end of Plaster Down, where it joins the one we left at the cross on Huckworthy Hill. Soon after, it enters upon Whitchurch Down at Warren's Cross, which is merely a cross-road, and passes over nearly its whole length. On this common the path of former days no doubt merged into one that we have had occasion to notice more than once, and which, as we shall presently find, crossed this down. We allude to the old Abbots* Way, the course of which across the . forest *we shall next trace, and for this purpose shall now make our way to quite a different part of the moor.
