56 NANGITHA CROSS. 



In this lane, and only a few yards from the stile, are yet to be 

 seen the remains of a cross. These consist (see fig. 1) of a well- 

 cut convex granite base of 5 ft. 9 in. diameter, whose middle 

 is perforated by an oblong mortice-hole of 1 ft. 9 in. in length, 

 and 1 ft. in breadth ; also of a granite plate in the form of a rude 

 segment of a circle, the straight side of which is 2 ft. long and 

 whose broadest part measured perpendicularly to this side is 1 ft. 

 1 in. This plate has a rudely cut cross in relief on either face, as 

 I have sketched in figs. 2 and 3. The entire border of the segment 

 seems to have been tool-cut; there being now no flaw on the 

 straight side, nor is there on the curved portion along one face, 

 and through half the thickness of the plate, though two splinters 

 have been chipped from the other half of the thickness so as to 

 infringe upon the curved margin of the other face, more or less 

 (that which is underneath in fig. 2, and uppermost in fig. 3). 

 This plate though longer than the mortice-hole is thin enough to 

 pass easily through it when presented to it edgeways. 



Since the dimensions mentioned make it obvious that the 

 plate could, in no manner, have been set in the hole, we may 

 safely conclude that it must have rested, somehow, upon a shaft, 

 though a cursory search thereabouts failed to detect such a thing 

 utilized as stile-step, gate-post, or grazing-post for cattle. Yet it 

 has not the appearance of having been broken ofi" from a shaft, 

 as the marks of fracture in such case should have affected its whole 

 thickness. There might have been a groove in the upper end of 

 the shaft into which the straight edge of the segment fitted, so 

 that an unsymmetrical St. Andrew's cross resulted. 



I may add, that, prompted by the recollection of a stone 

 pedestal just visible through a brake of brambles, that had often 

 puzzled my boyish curiosity, I seized an opportunity a few weeks 

 since to revisit the spot, accompanied by my brother, whose recol- 

 lections of the pedestal extended several years further back than 

 mine. Neither of us had ever heard that a cross had stood there, 

 but having lifted up through the mortice-hole, a stone plate that 

 was lying in a pit that had been excavated in the soil underneath, 

 and whose depth from the upper surface of the pedestal was 1 ft. 

 6 in., we found a cross on either aspect of it. After I had taken 

 the two sketches it was dropped into the hole again. The brake 

 had been cut away, but a bramble rooted in the pit grew up 



