Designation: Scheduled monument, Historic England list entry 1002661 (Western White Barrow)
Height: 1.3 m; both arms broken off; the cross is inverted
Cairn: up to 21 m across and 1.7 m high
Petre's Cross stands on the summit of Quickbeam Hill, on the round cairn called Western White Barrow. Historic England describes the cross as inverted, 1.3 metres high, of rectangular section, with both arms broken off. It was one of four crosses set up by Sir William Petre, who bought Brent Manor from Buckfast Abbey after the Dissolution in 1557, and it was used to mark the bounds of the Forest of Dartmoor in 1557 and in 1786.
About 1847 workers at the Red Lake peat ties, linked to the naphtha works at Shipley, built a two-roomed shelter in the cairn with a fireplace and chimney, using the cross as a chimney lintel. The cross was put up again after the building was partly destroyed. Crossing planned to visit it in 1888, "about three miles out from Shipley", and Rowe notes that the Petre family survives in Brent Moor names: Petre's Bound Stone, Petre's Cross and Petre's Pits.
Do not confuse the cross with Petre's Pit, a separate feature already listed on this site.
Sources: Historic England list entry 1002661; W. Crossing, Amid Devonia's Alps (1888) p. 54; Rowe, South Devon p. 262; Dartmoor with its surroundings, a handbook for visitors p. 128; OpenStreetMap.
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Plate from A Book of Dartmoor, page 10, 1900