Mount Misery Cross

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Teetering on the western flank of Ter Hill is the corner of an newtake belonging to the old Foxtor Farm, here the gateway overlooks the infamous Foxtor Mires and Swincombe Valley. A few feet away from the gateway stands an old granite cross which is one of the line of wayside crosses that marked the Maltern Way which was a very early monastic track that ran from Buckfast to Buckland abbeys. Although not marked on the OS map the newtake corner and the cross all take there name from the old enclosure - Mount Misery.

William Crossing (1987, p.96) records how in 1878 he found the cross lying on the ground in an opening to the newtake, in 1879 he revisited the spot and saw the cross had been re-erected. However, two years later he again called in on the cross and saw it was once again recumbent which he attributed to the moorland cattle using it as a rubbing post or knocking it over during a drift. With the help of a bag of cement the cross was finally re-erected and firmly secured into its socket by the Dartmoor Preservation Society in 1885. Crossing was always a man for using place-names where ever possible but for some reason in this book of 1892 he gives no mention of Mount Misery, the cross is simply described as being at the, "eastern corner of the newtake". But by the time he published ' Crossing's Guide to Dartmoor in 1909 (p.464) he was acknowledging the fact that the cross stood at Mount Misery, could this mean that the name was only given to the spot sometime between 1892 and 1909? Page (1895, p.260) also simply describes the cross as being, "in the eastern corner of the deserted newtake", again no mention of Mount Misery? But for now let's get back to the cross, today it stands at 1.66m and has a circumference of 94.5cm, the span of the arms stretches to 73cm and are aligned on a north - south axis, (Sandles, 1997 p.70).

In 1881 Crossing (p.96) describes how he found the head of another cross which some workmen had discovered whilst they were carrying out repair work on the newtake wall, this cross head he suggested may have come from the nearby Childe's Tomb. Since then there has been much debate as it its origins with a great deal of doubt cast upon Crossing's theory, sadly the cross head disappeared and so it's impossible to establish exactly where it came from. The only proof of its existence is an early photograph taken by T. Falcon sometime in the late 1880s in which the head is clearly shown sitting at the bottom of Mount Misery cross - see HERE.

Now to return to the actual place-name - Mount Misery, it sounds as if at one time something drastic happened here but it's more likely that the name refers to the fertility or profitability of the actual land. The actual enclosure belonged to the old Fox Tor Farm for which the Duchy granted first lease in 1807 and throughout its history the farm was used for both grazing and growing crops. In many cases the early Dartmoor enclosures has to be cleared of rocks and/or 'spaded' which was basically burning and pairing the ground prior to cultivation. In the early 1800s the so-called 'improvers' were working under the idea that if farmed properly the moorland wastes could be 'tamed' in such a way as to return a good profit which in most cases just resulted in ruin. It is with the word, "ruin", that the answer to the name Mount Misery lies because any land which was unproductive was considered a failure and so names were given to them which would reflect this fact. Field (1989, p.276) lists some examples; Starvation Hill, Never Gains, Famish Acre, Carry Nothing and Granite Piece, all of which suggest poor, unproductive land as is the case with Mount Misery. There are two specific theories as to what went wrong at Mount Misery, Hemery (1983, p.355) notes the following:

"The labour involved in building this wall corner and gateway must, in the inclement weather to which the place is exposed, have been a punishing task - likewise the spading and taming of the ground here in an attempt to grow crops: hence the depressing epithet 'Mount Misery' attaching to the place".

It is probably worth noting that when Hemery mentions the exposed location of Mount Misery that the spot stands at a height of 452m and affords no shelter what so ever. Therefore when the wind and rain comes across the bare hillside it could clearly be miserable on the mount. The other theory comes from Stanbrook (1994, p.45) which is that:

"The area at the north eastern boundary corner of the farm is known as Mount Misery... The area was apparently named Mount Misery by a Scottish sheep farmer who grazed sheep here, and who did not do too well. This may have been Scotsman Mr James Lamb, or one of his shepherds, who grazed Scottish Blackface sheep here in the 1880s".

Considering the above dates between when Crossing gives no mention of Mount Misery, ie 1892 and 1909, it would be hard to attribute the name to Lamb or his shepherds when they were farming the spot in the 1880s as Stanbrook suggests. But either way the name Mount Misery has now firmly been attached to the cross and the newtake corner and like so many other names it's a sad fact that the Ordnance Survey cannot acknowledge the fact - there is plenty of room on the map.

Bibliography.

Crossing, W. 1990 Crossing's Guide to Dartmoor, Peninsula Press, Newton Abbot.

Crossing, W. 1987 The Ancient Stone Crosses of Dartmoor, Devon Books, Exeter.

Field, J. 1989 English Field Names, Sutton Publishing, Gloucester.

Hemery, E. 1983 High Dartmoor, Hale, London.

Sandles, T. 1997 A Pilgrimage to Dartmoor's Crosses, Forest Publishing, Liverton.

Stanbrook, E. 1994 Dartmoor Forest Farms, Devon Books, Exeter.