Childe's Tomb

A well-known legend attached to the site, first recorded in 1630 by Tristram Risdon, concerns a wealthy hunter, Childe, who became lost in a snow storm and supposedly died there despite disembowelling his horse and climbing into its body for protection.

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.

[3] 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",[4] but no sign of this has ever been found.

[8][9] In 1902, William Crossing wrote that he had been told by an old moorman that some of the granite blocks from the tomb's pedestal had also been used to make a clapper bridge across a stream flowing into the River Swincombe near the farm.

[12] J. Brooking Rowe, writing in 1895, states that the tomb was re-erected in 1890 under the direction of Mr. E. Fearnley Tanner, who said that he was dissatisfied with the result because several stones were missing and it was difficult to recreate the original character of the monument.

[14] According to legend, the cross was erected over the kistvaen ('chest-stone' i.e. burial chamber) of Childe the Hunter, who was Ordulf, son of Ordgar, an Anglo-Saxon Earl of Devon in the 11th century.

The first account of this story is to be found in Risdon's Survey of Devon which was completed in around 1632: It is left us by tradition that one Childe of Plimstoke, a man of fair possessions, having no issue, ordained, by his will, that wheresoever he should happen to be buried, to that church his lands should belong.

The season then being so cold, and he so benumed therewith, as he was enforced to kill his horse, and embowelled him, to creep into his belly to get heat; which not able to preserve him, was there frozen to death; and so found, was carried by Tavistoke men to be buried in the church of that abbey; which was so secretly done but the inhabitants of Plymstoke had knowledge thereof; which to prevent, they resorted to defend the carriage of the corpse over the bridge, where, they conceived, necessity compelled them to pass.