Original - The MAN & Other Families

2o The Ancient Stone Crossesstream is a craggy hollow, though we can see little of it, fromwhich the river issues. It there falls in a series of smallcascades and widely spreading rivulets over a number ofrocky ledges, olaced at the head of the solitary glen.From Buckland Ford we shall follow the Abbots' Wayto the Avon, and tracing the river downward shall crossit at another ford, at a spot known to the moormen asLower Huntingdon Corner, immediately above the confluenceof the stream with the Western Wellabrook. Itis here the inquisition says, the fourth cross was setup, and we shall be gratified at observing it standingerect a few yards from the bank of the river. It is nowknown as Huntingdon Cross, and is situated at the corner ofthe warren. It isimmediately within the forest bounds, andclose to the spot where the parish of Lydford (inwhich thewhole of the forest lies) joins the parishes of Dean andBrent.Although the crosses at Buckland Ford and Lower HuntingdonCorner were claimed in 1557 as marking the boundaryof Brent Moor, it is not at all probable that such was theiroriginal purpose. That, there is little doubt, was to mark theAbbots' W7ay, and they were adapted later as boundary stonesBut it is, nevertheless, certain that Brent Moor never extendedto Buckland P^ord. The Perambulation of 1240 andthe Survey of 1609 both show that the forest boundary lineruns from the confluence of the Wellabrook and the Avon toEastern Whitaburrow, and not directly to Western Whitaburrow,so that Buckland Ford would lie some way within theforest. The placing of the Brent boundary at the latter spotwas simply an encroachment on the duchy property, of whichthere are a number of similar instances in other paats of themoor.The name Huntingdonis not improbably derived from aun,water (in this particular instance the name of the river whichhere flows by) and dun, a hill, i.e., the water hill, which certainlycommends itself as a very suitable apellation, for thelatter is bounded on two sides by the Avon or Aune, and on athird by the Wellabrook.Huntingdon Cross is romantically situated in a kind ofhollow, the rising ground surroundingitbeing covered withpatches of heather, with here and there a grey boulder of