ON THE TRACK OF THE " OLD MEN." 
231 
If the tin obtained was at all commensurate with the amount 
of work performed in this valley, it must have been large, and 
shows remarkable activity, extending probably over a long period. 
Opposite Kingsett — the name has a mining smack about it — and 
across the stream, is a ruin, so overgrown with vegetation and 
covered up with debris that it is impossible to say what it was. 
In the entrance, which is on the north side, is a stone with a 
cavity twelve inches long and seven wide at one end, and five 
inches at the other, with a depth of three to four inches. The 
ends of the cavity are rounded, the interior rough, and not 
bevelled. It could not have been used as a mould, and it is too 
small and shallow for use as a trough. 
The valley washed by the brook which flows down from 
under Eylesbarrow between Sheepstor and Down Tor, joining 
the Meavy at Nosworthy Bridge, has been also streamed to a 
considerable extent. There are ruins of former habitations, and 
high up in the valley, close to Deancombehead farmhouse, is a 
gorge containing two caches, somewhat similar to that previously 
described at Deep Swincombe. The first is about one hundred 
yards south-east of the farmhouse, and the second about one 
hundred and fifty yards further up the gorge, with a cover stone 
formed by a flat boulder, resting very insecurely on a dwarf wall 
of dry masonry. Like the cache below, it was in a concealed 
position. 
Whilst searching the deep ravine made by the " old men," the 
writers son Lawrence discovered an entrance which appeared to 
lead to a cave. The approach was through a curved open trench 
twenty-three feet long, and led to a doorway three feet high and 
three wide. It was found on examination that the door was gone, 
but the posts and lintel of worked granite were still in perfect 
condition. 
After clearing away the ferns, which quite concealed the entrance, 
a candle was lighted and the interior explored. 
Inside the doorway a tunnel nearly nine feet long, and through 
which it was necessary to proceed stooping, led into a chamber 
scooped out of the rotten granite about nine feet long by seven 
feet eight inches broad and nearly ten feet high. The roof of the 
chamber was dome-shaped, partly produced by portions of it 
falling down — as a rough gravel — until the floor had been covered 
to the extent of a foot or more. Choked up among this were 
