Z44 The AncietU Stone Crosses At the distance of a little over a mile, at a cross-road, we shall notice an old guiding-stone on the left, with the letters M N C T incised, one on each of its four faces. These stand for Moretonhampstead, Newton, Chagford, and Tavistock, and are so placed as to indicate the direc- tion of each. Three miles from Moreton our road is again crossed by another, at a spot known as Watching Place, and also as Beetor Cross, and here, too, we find a similarly inscribed stone, excepting that the direction of Newton is not indicated. Formerly the traveller over this road also saw the spot marked by a stone cross, but for the half century preceding 1900, and perhaps for a longer time, it was missing ^om its place, its name alone remaining there. In 1848 the Rev. Samuel Rowe stated that Beetor Cross was then standing in a field adjoining the spot that bears its name. In 1857 ^^' Ormerod made a drawing of it, when it was acting as a gate-post on Hele Moors. This is probably the same spot on which it stood in Mr. Rowe*s time, as Hele Moors, which are now, and were then, enclosed, are close by, and may very well be described as fields. Mr. Ormerod informs us in his paper, written in 1874, that three years before '* it was removed from that spot to act in the same capacity at a gateway leading out of Hele Plantation to Hele House." I think he is hardly correct here, as I made enquiry some years ago from those likely to know, and I could not find that the cross ever formed a gate-post at Hele Plantation. In 1892 I saw it when it acted as a gate-post in a field to the south of the road, and there it remained until the last year of the nineteenth century Early in that year the Rev. W. H. Thornton, rector of North Bovey, brought the subject of its restoration to the notice of the members of the Teign Naturalists* Field Club, and a sum of money to defiray the cost of the desirable work was voted. It was carried out by Mr. Thornton, with the co-operation of the owner, Mr. Taylor, of Hele, and in the month of August was completed. A party of forty-five members of the club drove to the spot to inspect the cross and afterwards visited the rectory where the pleasing ceremony of its inauguration was concluded That this old cross, now happily nearer the site on which it probably stood for centuries, was erected to nuu'k the 9
