Coffin Stone Inscribed Crosses (x5)

Sabine Baring-Gould, in ‘A Book of Dartmoor’, writes: “The descent to Dartmeet by the road is one of over five hundred feet. Halfway is the Coffin-stone, on which five crosses are cut, and which is split in half – the story goes, by lightning. On this it is customary to rest a dead man on his way from the moor beyond Dartmeet to his final resting-place at Widdecombe. When the coffin is laid on this stone, custom exacts the production of the whisky bottle, and a libation all round to the manes of the deceased.”

Reference: Sabine Baring-Gould (1900): A Book of Dartmoor.