94 ^^ Ancieut Stone Crosses the notice of those interested in the antiquities of the moor, I hoped to see its restoration undertaken. This, however, has never been accomplished. It was deemed better to allow the various parts of the old moDn- ment to lie where they were, a reproach to the Dartmoor antiquary, and to simply mark its site by setting up on a few of the stones thrown over the kistvaen, a new base and a new cross ! No regard whatever was paid to the known fonn of the tomb, and it would have been far better had it been left untouched. But we will express a hope that the re-erection of Childe's Tomb may yet be undertaken. Three stones, and the repair of the socket-stone, are all that is needed, with the exceptioD of the cross, to render the parts complete. Where is the cross? It was seen about 1823, and again in 1825. In the former year the Rev.. J. P. Jones published his Observatints on the Antiquities in the Neighbourhood of Moreioih hampstead, and in it he states that a gentleman informed him that a cairn three miles south of the prison at Princetown had been pointed out to him as Childe of Plymstock's tomb, and that a cross was lying near the cairn, a great part of which was destroyed. The situation of the tomb is not given quite correctly, but there is no reason to doubt it was that object which Mr. Jones saw. In 1825 it was visited by Carrington, and, as we have already seen, the cross was then lying by the tomb, with its shaft broken. It must, however, have been removed within a few years after, as Eden, the moorman told me that he did not remember seeing anything of the kind there in his childhood. In 1881 I found the head of a cross in a corner of the Fox Tor enclosures, about half-a-mile from the tomb. Though it is obviously impossible to pronounce it to be the one that once surmounted it, it is not altogether un- likely, as we shall see when we come to examine it. If the restoration of the tomb were decided upon, I would again uggest that this fragment be set upon a shaft, and fixed in the ancient socket-stone. It would preserve it, and there would be less need of new work. Whatever may be the truth 'of the tale of Childe of Plymstock, it is certain that something above the ordinary attached to this old tomb, or we should not have found such a monument erected over it. There being so few traditions
