188 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
only from distant parts of England, but probably from France and 
other parts of the Continent, were from time to time engaged on 
the building. We can trace the influence of their work in some 
of the parish churches both of Devon and Cornwall, and even in 
the outlying moorland churches, at least in such portions of them 
as are Norman and Early English. We have beautiful fragments 
of Norman masonry in South Brent and Meavy churches, which 
were originally cruciform in plan, and were built not long after the 
Norman portion of the cathedral. 
As I have before remarked, the Norman and Early English 
sculptors and masons worked almost and invariably in freestone, 
from Caen, Beer, and other known quarries far and near; but they 
most carefully avoided granite. I find little trace of their work 
in these eastern moorland churches; in fact, after a few lessons 
in style, the moorland builders were, no doubt, left pretty much 
to themselves. And no wonder! Nobody but a moorman to this 
day knows how to handle a boulder. He has a knack of breaking 
it up, and working it into a wall or hedge, most adroitly, which 
an ordinary mason has no idea of. A man may, and does, take a 
pride in working in granite as in anything else, but it is laboured 
and not very entertaining work. The best of the carving on 
Widecombe tower, or Probus tower, is rude, compared with that 
on the Somersetshire towers or on those in Devon which are of 
freestone. The sculptor wants a tractable material to deal with, 
and likes to see his handiwork follow his thought and fancy more 
quickly than he possibly can when working in granite. So the 
moorland carvers had it very much to themselves, and so also the - 
masons. Their work is good of its kind, and for the material 
used, but it is not always very exact. Tracery sometimes tits 
awkwardly on mullions (as in the west window of St. Andrew’s, 
Plymouth), or perhaps one of the very large quoin-stones of a 
moorland church is an inch or two out of the perpendicular, or 
there is the difference of an inch or so in a joint made up with 
slate or coarse mortar; but then it is granite work, and also the 
work of rough moorland builders, who did their best with their 
own hard and rugged native material. 
A noticeable feature of the churches under review is a fifteenth- 
century doorway formed of four immense granite stones—two arch- 
stones meeting at the point of the arch, and two jamb-stones. At 
Buckland-in-the-Moor, Bickington, Manaton, North Bovey, and 
