Of Dartmoor and its Bordefland. 119 seems to read incid ^ . I learn that the Rev. S. Baring- Gould has deciphered this inscription, or part of it, and considers it to be Romano-British. Other letters have been cut upon the stone in more modem times, being the initials of the names of places, the particular face upon which they are incised indicating their direction. Towards the north is the letter H, Hatherleigh ; south, T» Tavistock; east, O, Okehampton ; and west, L> Launceston. Our road will be the eastern one, as Okehampton is the next place we shall visit. About eighty paces from this cross stands an old directing-stone, the top of which is mutilated, but there remains sufficient of the inscriptions it once bore to show us that on one side were the words Hatherleigh Road^ and on the other, OhehampUm Road. After passing the railway to Holsworthy and North Cornwall, a lane turns on the right, leading to the hamlet of Meldon. There, near a cottage, is an upright slab, which might at first be taken for an ancient stone. It is, however, merely an ingle-stone, left standing when the cottage to which it belonged was demolished. Just before reaching Okehampton we shall pass the ruins of the castle built by the Norman follower of the Conqueror, Baldwin de Brionys. It rises midst the trees with which the side of the hill is covered, and below it sweeps the West Ockment, a stream that unites with the East Ockment immediately below the town. There is now no cross at Okehampton, but a reference to one that formerly existed in the town is to be found in a Journal kept by Richard Shebbeare, mayor of the borough in the seventeenth century, and printed in Bridges' Account of the Barony and Town of Okehampton.* The entry, the date of which is 26th October, 1696, is as follows : — " This day the Lord*s Justices' proclamation was prodaymed at the town-hall, at the Crosse and at the markett house wherein was signified that the King had concluded a peace with the French King, and a bonfire made down at Beare Bridge/* Built into the east wall of Okehampton Church is a stone with an incised cross, and bearing an inscription. It was discovered in the foundations of a former church, and had been used as a building stone. On one side of the incised ^Published in parts, about the year 1839. A new edition, with additional chapters, was published in 1889.
