Description
Childe's Tomb is a reconstructed granite cross on the south-east edge of Foxtor Mires, about 500 metres north of Fox Tor on Dartmoor, Devon, England at grid reference SX625704. According to William Burt, in his notes to Dartmoor, a Descriptive Poem by N. T. Carrington (1826), the original tomb consisted of a pedestal of three steps, the lowest of which was built of four stones each six feet long and twelve inches square. The two upper steps were made of eight shorter but similarly shaped stones, and on top was an octagonal block about three feet high with a cross fixed upon it.
The tomb lies on the line of several cairns that marked the east-west route of the ancient Monks' Path between Buckfast Abbey and Tavistock Abbey and it was no doubt erected here as part of that route: it would have been particularly useful in this part of the moor with few landmarks where a traveller straying from the path could easily end up in Foxtor Mires. Tristram Risdon, writing in about 1630, said that Childe's Tomb was one of three remarkable things in the Forest of Dartmoor (the others being Crockern Tor and Wistman's Wood). Risdon also stated that the original tomb bore an inscription: "They fyrste that fyndes and bringes mee to my grave, The priorie of Plimstoke they shall have", but no sign of this has ever been found.
Today the cross, which is a replacement, is about 3 feet 4 inches (1 m) tall and 1 foot 8 inches (0.5 m) across at the crosspiece, and it has its base in a socket stone which rests on a pedestal of granite blocks that raises the total height of the cross to 7 ft (2.1 m). The original, now broken, socket stone for the cross lies nearby. The whole is surrounded by a circle of granite stones set on their edge which once surrounded the cairn—the rocks of which are now scattered around—that was originally built over a large kistvaen that still exists beneath the pedestal.
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“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St. Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)