Of Dartmoor and its Borderland. 153 made to serve the purpose of a foot-bridge over a rivulet that faHs into the Bovey Brook a short distance below the village, but this we are willing to forgive at seeing it once more standing erect, in, or near, its original situation. To the Rev. J. P. Jones, a gentleman whose writings prove him to have been possessed of true antiquarian tastes, do we owe the preservation of this old memorial of other times. He caused it to be brought from the rivulet, and after having the base, or socket-stone, which had been cast on one side, set firmly in the ground, had the cross fixed upon it. This was done not long after the passing of "An Act for the Relief of His Majesty's Roman Catholic Subjects," in April, 1829, Mr. Jones then being the curate of North Bovey. Whether this piece of legislation was instrumental in bringing about a decision to restore this cross, or whether t^ie time chosen was merely accidental, I am not able to say. The cross is five feet two inches in height, the shaft being fourteen inches in width at the bottom, and nine-and-a-half inches in thickness ; immediately under the arms it is an inch wider. Across the arms the measurement is twenty-five inches; one of these projects four, and the other five-and- a-half inches, and they spring off at a distance of three feet eleven inches from the bottom. The head rises five-and- a-half inches above them. Four small iron clamps secure the shaft in the socket, which is much too large for it, from which circumstance it has been supposed that the cross did not originally belong to the base. But from what I was once able to gather from an old inhabitant of the village, who remembered very well when the cross was re-erected, it does not appear that such a belief existed at the time. Th« work- manship in each is plain, and of precisely similar character, and apart from the size of the socket they certainly seem intended for one another. It is possible that the socket may have been enlarged in order to permit of the cross being set nearer to the centre of the stone, or the foot of the shaft may have been shaped like one we shall presently notice at South Harton Farm, in the parish of Lustleigh, and this would necessitate a very large socket. The base-stone is fourteen inches high, and very nearly three feet square at the bottom, but gathered into an octagon at the top. One of its corners is broken off.
