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Page:Devon & Cornwall Notes & Queries.djvu/445

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74 J^^ Ancient Stone Crosses towards the socket in which it is placed. These measurements I took on the eastern side. Its average thickness is four- teen inches. The arms spring from the shaft at a distance of five feet nine inches from the bottom, the largest of them, the southerly one, being eleven inches in depth close to the shaft, and the smaller one only eight inches. At the distance of three feet eight inches from the bottom the shaft has been broken, but an iron clamp on each side now holds it iirmly together, and iron wedges also secure it in the socket. The damage was caused by the cross being overturned, but how this occurred remained for many years unknown. In 1889, however, I gathered the particulars from Mr. W. H. Woodley, of Plymouth, a great lover of the moor, who obtained them two or three years previously from one who was concerned in the overthrow of the cross, and on the loth September in that year Mr. Woodley again saw his informant, when he confirmed his former story. It appears that when a lad he was out with a companion looking for cattle on the moor, and finding that the cross rocked in its socket, they pushed it over, and the shaft broke in two pieces. This was in 1846, but it was soon after repaired by a stone- mason named John Newcombe, and when Rowe wrote — in 1848 — it was again erect. It forms one of the boundary marks of the forest, being mentioned in the Perambulation of 1240, and is figured on the old map of the moor already referred to. Here it is represented as standing on steps, in the same manner as Hobajon*s Cross, but there is no trace of anything of the kind now. On the back of the map the perambulation is set forth, and at its foot is the following : — '^ hit is to be noatid that on the one syde of the crosse abouesaid their is graven in the stone Crux Siwardi, and on the oth. side is graven, Roolande." In the notes to Carrington's Dartmoor, however, it is stated that on the western side the words Bond bond are to be seen in Saxon characters, having been conjectured, so that work states, to mean the bond or bound of the land, and on the eastern side, in more modern characters, the word Syward, considered to be the name of some prince, duke, or earl of the forest. The writer of the Dartmoor portion of Mwrrey^s Handhook for Devonshire, ed. 1879, Mr. R. J. King, whose