Swallerton Gate Cross (head in a cottage wall)

• Grid reference: SX 7390 7920 (Dartmoor Trust)
• Where: Garden wall of Swallerton Gate, on the Ashburton to Chagford road
• Rediscovered: Sources disagree: 1939 or 1987
• Viewing: From the road only; the cottage is private

The cross head is built into the wall of Swallerton Gate, a small cottage at a three-road junction below Hound Tor. The Dartmoor Trust archive says it was rediscovered in rubble in 1987, while F. H. Starkey's 1987 book says it was found in a nearby hedge in 1939 and described by E. N. Masson Phillips in 1940. Dartmoor CAM adds that it was nearly used as hardcore for an extension floor until Harry Starkey recognised it as a medieval cross head.

It may be the former Swine Path Cross named in an 1786 description of the Chagford and Ashburton stannary boundary. The cottage was the Hound Tor Inn until 1840, and Thor Heyerdahl rented it in 1952 while writing up the Kon-Tiki report. It is Grade II listed as list entry 1308947 (listed 4 February 1987), described as a small house of probably late seventeenth or early eighteenth century date, extended in the 1920s, with granite rubble walls and a thatched roof. The listing text does not mention the cross. View the cross from the lane and do not go into the garden.

Sources: Dartmoor Trust archive record | Dartmoor CAM, Hound Tor walk | British Listed Buildings, Swallerton Gate | Dartmoor Crosses, the same cross with photographs.