25O ON A RECENT SUBSIDENCE AT MUCKING, ESSEX. 



would soon be obvious to them, on trial, that nothing whatever 

 was gained (around their dwellings) by an extra ten or twenty 

 feet of depth, and that, in strata consisting of sands and gravels, 

 with an occasional clayey band, though a foot or two of clay at 

 the surface tended to keep a pit dry, a clay band near the 

 bottom of the excavation tended to keep it wet. 



Thus the three or four feet of London Clay at the surface 

 where the recent Mucking subsidence took place would tend to 

 keep dry any chambers in the sands beneath. The section 

 where the older depressions westward exist is probably similar, 

 with the addition, in their case, of a few feet of old Thames 

 gravel. And the shape of the newest subsidence decidedly 

 suggests the former presence of a large chamber, or group of 

 chambers, at no great depth in the sands, which has now 

 collapsed. In all probability a similar statement would be true 

 of the depressions in the field westward. And it seems to me 

 that the only probable explanation of their existence is that they 

 mark the site of ancient pits of the denehole class, once used as 

 granaries and storehouses. 



In Palin's Move about Stifford the author remarks, p. 40 (after 

 quoting an account by Mr. R. Lloyd Williams of the dene- 

 holes of Hangman's Wood and elsewhere) : — 



" We may add that a ' Danehole ' partly filled up is to be found in the 

 Stifford chalk quarry. But to show that chalk was not the object in making 

 them, it may be mentioned that a series of them in Mucking Woods was filled 

 up within the last few years, and these were in sand." 



And on the same page he notes that : — 



" Mr. J. E. K. Cutts, in an interesting paper on Billericay, read to the 

 Essex Archaeological Society at its annual meeting at Chelmsford, 1871, says, 

 'Not far from this tumulus is an excavation like a gravel pit, which the young 

 labourer's father had told him was a' Denehole' which had 'caved in.' He 

 (Mr. Cutts) dug down 3 feet, but found nothing but a few broken tiles." 



We have seen that at the Mucking hole the Chalk is 

 probably about 150ft. beneath the surface. Now at Billericay, 

 which is about eight miles nearly due north of it, and on the 

 Bagshot Beds, which overlie the London Clay, the distance to 

 the Chalk from the surface must certainly be more than 500ft. 

 Yet we find " the young labourer's father " had no doubt that 

 the excavation there was a " denehole " which had " caved in,' r 

 and his recognition of it as a denehole showed that, at a place 

 where there could never have been a denehole ending in Chalk, 



