Gisperdown Cross (cross head in a farm wall)

• Grid reference: SX 70183 63037 (catalogue)
• Size: 48.1 cm high with a 42 cm span (Harrison)
• Carved: An incised cross on both faces
• Milestone Society ID: DVSH_SBR02

The cross head is built into an ivy-capped field wall to the right of the cattle grid at the entrance to Gisperdown Farm, up a steep narrow lane from Harbourneford. Neither Crossing nor Starkey mentions it, and the first description is in Bill Harrison's Dartmoor Stone Crosses of 2001. Around 1947 men repairing a wall and bank at the farm found the head, part of a shaft with one arm still on it and the other arm detached. They kept the main part but used the broken arm in the wall backfill, and the farmer, interested in Dartmoor heritage, had the wall pulled down again, but the arm was not found.

Harrison records that the farmer thought it might be the lost fourth Brent Moor boundary cross, the others being Hobajohn's, Petre's and Huntingdon, and that the shaft may have been used by tinners in a shelter at Wider Brook Clitters. That is a possibility, not a proof. The farm is private land and the cross is visible from the lane.

Sources: Geograph photograph and Milestone Society caption | Legendary Dartmoor, Gisperdown Cross | Dartefacts, Gisperdown Cross | Dartmoor Crosses, the same cross with photographs.