Listing
Search the List

What is Listing?

Listing Guidance

Apply for Listing

Missing Pieces Project

Blue Plaque Scheme
Listing

Find out about listed buildings and other protected sites, and search the National Heritage List for England (NHLE).

Find out about listing

Terracotta tiles on the roof of Saintoft Lodge, Newton-on-Rawcliffe, Ryedale, North Yorkshire. Grade II listed © Historic England Archive DP371715
Advice
Climate Change

Heritage at Risk

Your Home

Technical Guidance

Planning

Caring for Heritage

Constructive Conservation
Advice

See our extensive range of expert advice to help you care for and protect historic places.

Get our advice

A contractor cutting bricks for the wall of the partially-restored wild and natural walled garden at Warley Place, Brentwood. Explore our technical advice section © Historic England Archive DP313199
Research
Our Research Strategy and Agenda

Research Governance

Latest Research

Research Methods

Current Research

Research Results

Support & Collaboration

Inclusive Heritage

Heritage Counts
Research

Discover and use our high-quality applied research to support the protection and management of the historic environment.

Discover our research

Archaeologist Dr David Neal discussing his illustration of the mosaic being excavated at Rutland Roman Villa with members of the University of Leicester Archaeological Services team View image DP264265 © Historic England
Images & Books
Find Photos

Search All Publications

Buy Books

The Historic England Archive
Images & Books

Historic England holds an extensive range of publications and historic collections in its public archive covering the historic environment.

Browse our collections

Children play with a doll and a pram on the cobbled Church Path in Queen Camel, Somerset, in April 1953. At the far end of the path is the tower of the Church of St Barnabas, which dates to the 14th century. Photographer: John Gay Image reference: AA091596 © Historic England Archive
Services & Skills
Education

Grants

Our Planning Services

Training & Skills

Archive Services

Heritage Action Zones

Levelling Up Places Service
Services & Skills

Find out about services offered by Historic England for funding, planning, education and research, as well as training and skill development.

Learn about our services

Heritage Apprentices in a training session on the Researching The Historic Environment module and training in Architectural Photography. Find out more about Heritage Apprenticeships © Historic England Archive DP347660
What's New
News

In Your Area

Historic England Blog

Latest Research

Heritage Online Debate

Statements

Stay up to Date
What's New

Read about our current news, projects and campaigns nationally and in your area.

Catch up with what's new

Two horsemen reading The Sportsman, 30 Oct 1902, Farnborough, Stratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire. Part of the Alfred Newton and Sons collection. Source Historic England Archive. BB98/02592
About Us
What We Do

Who We Are

How We Are Funded

Contact Us

Careers

Volunteer with Historic England
About Us

Historic England is the public body that helps people care for, enjoy and celebrate England's spectacular historic environment.

Find out more

Mountbatten House (formerly Gateway House), Basing View, Basingstoke, the former headquarters for the paper merchants Wiggins Teape by Arup Associates. Listed at Grade II. © Historic England
Sign in
Manage my account

Sign out

Marchant's Cross: a wayside cross 700m south east of Meavy

Listed on the National Heritage List for England. Search over 400,000 listed places

Overview

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1008924
Date first listed:: 02-Jul-1964

The Missing Pieces Project

Share your view of unique places.

Add your contribution

Location

Location of this list entry and nearby places that are also listed. Use our map search to find more listed places.

This map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale.

What is the National Heritage List for England?

The National Heritage List for England is a unique register of our country's most significant historic buildings and sites. The places on the list are protected by law and most are not open to the public.

The list includes:

🏠 Buildings
🏰 Scheduled monuments
🌳 Parks and gardens
⚔️ Battlefields
⚓ Shipwrecks

Find out more about listing

Historic England Archive

Search over 1 million photographs and drawings from the 1850s to the present day using our images archive.

Find Photos

Official list entry

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1008924
Date first listed:: 02-Jul-1964
Date of most recent amendment:: 25-Aug-1994

Location

The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

County:: Devon
District:: West Devon (District Authority)
Parish:: Meavy
National Park:: DARTMOOR
National Grid Reference:: SX 54597 66810

Reasons for Designation

Dartmoor is the largest expanse of open moorland in southern Britain and, because of exceptional conditions of preservation, it is also one of the most complete examples of an upland relict landscape in the whole country. The great wealth and diversity of archaeological remains provides direct evidence for human exploitation of the Moor from the early prehistoric period onwards. The well preserved and often visible relationship between settlement sites, land boundaries, trackways, ceremonial and funerary monuments as well as later industrial remains, gives significant insights into successive changes in the pattern of land use through time. Wayside crosses are one of several types of Christian cross erected during the medieval period, mostly from the 9th to 15th centuries AD. In addition to serving the function of reiterating and reinforcing the Christian faith amongst those who passed the cross and of reassuring the traveller, wayside crosses often fulfilled a role as waymarkers, especially in difficult and otherwise unmarked terrain. The crosses might be on regularly used routes linking settlements, or on routes which might have a more specifically religious function, including those providing access to religious sites for parishioners and funeral processions, or marking long distance routes frequented on pilgrimages. Over 110 examples of wayside crosses are known on Dartmoor, where they form the commonest type of stone cross. Almost all of the wayside crosses on the Moor take the form of a `Latin' cross, in which the cross-head itself is shaped within the projecting arms of an unenclosed cross. Wayside crosses contribute significantly to our understanding of medieval routeways, settlement patterns and the development of sculptural traditions. All wayside crosses on the Moor which survive as earth-fast monuments, except those which are extremely damaged and removed from their original locations, are considered worthy of protection.

Marchant's Cross is one of the largest surviving wayside crosses in the Dartmoor region. Despite twice being damaged this century, it has been well repaired and remains well preserved. Although there is no absolute proof that this is the cross recorded as `Smalacumbacrosse' in the late 13th century it is a likely candidate, and certainly existed at the time the record was made. There is every reason to believe that the cross is sited in its original position at the junction of what, in medieval times, were important routes. Published photographs survive of the cross from 1890 onwards.

Details

The monument includes a well preserved wayside cross of moderately coarse-grained granite, set in a granite socket stone at the junction of a minor public road with the lane to Yeo Farm. Both these routes were important in medieval times. The cross was formed from a single piece of stone which is rectangular in section, measuring 0.34m by 0.26m, and has slightly chamfered edges 0.05m wide. The arms of the cross are aligned nearly north-south. The height of the shaft above the socket is 2.33m. The total width of the arms is 0.69m, and their total depth is 0.34m. The head extends above the arms 0.35m. There is an incised cross on each face between the arms, that on the west face measures 0.68m by 0.36m (the width of the incision is 0.02m-0.04m and it has a maximum depth of 0.005m) and that on the east face measures 0.7m by 0.36m (0.03m- 0.04m wide by 0.01m maximum depth). Visible edges of the socket stone measure 1.2m by 0.9m. There is some slight damage on the south east corner of the shaft 1.15m above the base, on the east side of the north arm, and the bottom corner of the south arm. The shaft of the cross was broken at the base in 1937, and again in 1984 when there was also a break diagonally across the arms. This damage (caused by runaway vehicles) has been well repaired, though the stump of the cross which was moved to the churchyard at Meavy in 1937 has since been lost. The cross is Listed Grade II. There is an OS bench mark at the base of the west face of the shaft.

MAP EXTRACT The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:: 24807
Legacy System:: RSM

Sources

Books and journals
Burnard, R, Dartmoor Pictorial Records I, (1890), 47-8
Burnard, R, Dartmoor Pictorial Records I, (1890)
Masson Phillips, E, 'Devonshire Association Transactions' in The Ancient Stone Crosses of Devon : Part 1, , Vol. 69, (1936-37), 312
Masson Phillips, E M, 'Transactions of the Devonshire Association' in The Ancient Stone Crosses of Devon, Part 2, (1938)
Masson Phillips, E M, 'Transactions of the Devonshire Association' in The Ancient Stone Crosses of Devon, Part 2, (1938), 304
Worth, R H, 'Report & Transactions of the Devonshire Association' in Marchants Cross, Meavy, , Vol. 74, (1942), 203-206
Worth, R H, 'Report & Transactions of the Devonshire Association' in Marchants Cross, Meavy, , Vol. 74, (1942)
Worth, R H, 'Report & Transactions of the Devonshire Association' in Marchants Cross, Meavy, , Vol. 74, (1942), 205

Legal

This monument is scheduled under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979 as amended as it appears to the Secretary of State to be of national importance. This entry is a copy, the original is held by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.