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Antiquities

Shorter Cross: a wayside cross on the north side of a minor road, 350m north west of Middlecott

Devon

Shorter Cross is a wayside cross of medieval origin, one of several that still punctuate the roads and tracks crossing Dartmoor and its fringes. These crosses served practical and spiritual purposes for travellers on foot or horseback, marking routes through open moorland and providing waypoints in a landscape without modern signage.

Today the cross stands on the north side of a minor road north west of Middlecott, a modest but enduring reminder of centuries of movement across this part of Devon. Its survival as a scheduled monument reflects the historical importance of these humble markers to understanding how people navigated and used Dartmoor's landscape.

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Photo: Alan Rosevear (CC BY-SA 2.0) via Wikimedia Commons

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