Urgles Cross (Wigford Down)

• Grid reference: SX 53506 64873 (Dartmoor Explorations)
• Original: Lost; its base is recorded by Crossing in 1902
• Today: A modern cross on a tall granite shaft
• Also called: Goodameavy Cross, by some locals

William Crossing wrote in 1902 of the base of a cross opposite the gate of Urgles Farm: a large, flat, not quite circular stone about a foot thick and five feet across at its widest, kidney-shaped where one edge was broken, with a socket 11 by 9 inches and only a little over 4 inches deep. He found no trace of the cross itself and could not learn that anyone had seen it. He thought one use of the cross was to show the direction of the green path across Wigford Down from the cross near Cadover Bridge, and to point to the ford or bridge at Goodameavy below.

The cross standing today is not the original. Dartefacts says it marks an ancient route used by monks between Shaugh Prior and Buckland Abbey. Dartmoor Explorations, repeating another site, says the original socket stone was moved to Good-a-Meavy House to carry a newer cross put up by the owner as a memorial to his son, killed at the Dardanelles in the First World War, and that another cross was made and put up in the first half of the twentieth century. That story has not been checked against another source. It stands beside a minor road on the edge of open access land.

Sources: William Crossing, Ancient Stone Crosses of Dartmoor (1902) | Dartefacts, Urgles Cross | Dartmoor Explorations, Wigford Down | Geograph photograph, Alan Rosevear | Dartmoor Crosses, the same cross with photographs.