A HISTORY OF ESSEX 



The chambers (which show bands of flints in the chalk walls) are 

 of varying height, the floor of one referred to by Mr. Miller Christy 

 being about 25 feet from the base of the shaft. In some shafts are still 

 traceable ' foot-holes ' formed in the hard sand, by which it may have 

 been easy to descend and ascend with the aid of guide-ropes. 



Darkness and doubt surround the age and purpose of the deneholes ; 

 those who desire to form an opinion upon these points cannot do better 

 than study the papers above named, but we may briefly say that the 

 Essex Field Club exploration ' has made the post-Neolithic age of the 

 Hangman's Wood pits almost certain.' 1 Pick-marks, evidently made by 

 metal tools, show construction at later date than the stone age, while a 

 somewhat indefinite reference by Mr. R. Meeson 2 suggests the use of 

 one pit for a Roman burial, though this of course would not prove con- 

 struction in Roman times. Of the immense age of the pits there can 

 be no doubt, but to what period they can be assigned is ' not proven.' 



Space will not allow us to say much as to their possible use. Dr. 

 Plot, writing upon the natural history of Oxfordshire (1705), refers 

 incidentally to these pits as ' the gold mine of Cunobeline in Essex dis- 

 covered again temp. Henry IV.' Absurd as the gold-mine theory is, it 

 was not too absurd for a wild attempt during the ' South Sea Bubble ' 

 (c. 1720) to float a company to rework the pits for gold. 



Mr. J. G. Waller, 3 Mr. Charles Dawson* and many others consider 

 the pits to have been made simply for the excavation of chalk, a view 

 which is energetically opposed by Messrs. Cole and Holmes. 6 



If the primary wish of the excavators was to obtain chalk they knowingly and 

 wilfully concentrated their efforts of every kind so as to ensure the least and worst 

 possible return for their labour a thing which no people, ancient or modern, ever did 

 or will do. 



Mr. Miller Christy is equally forcible in his remarks 8 : 



It can hardly be conceived that any community, if wanting chalk, would 

 have dug down through nearly 60 feet of superimposed strata to obtain it, when an 

 unlimited supply could have been obtained actually at the surface within a mile. To 

 suppose any race of people capable of such absurdity is to discredit their sanity. 



Moreover, if merely chalk pits, why should all the Deneholes have been excavated 

 upon the same symmetrical plan ? And why, above all things, should care have been 

 exercised (as it most clearly had been) to avoid any underground communication 

 between the different pits. 



Mr. A. R. Goddard 7 suggests the use of the pits as lairs for 

 ambushment or refuge in very early days. 



Others suggest mining for flints, search for iron pyrites, wells for 

 water, etc., but all of these suggestions are combated in the papers men- 

 tioned, and we feel that the amount of our present information is summed 

 up in the words, ' the hypothesis that the Hangman's Wood Deneholes 

 were mainly used as secret storehouses for grain, furnishes perhaps the 



1 Essex NaturaKst, i. 245. * Arch. Journ. xxvi. 191. 



3 Reliquary, 1896, p. 36. 4 Geological Mag. 1898, pp. 293, 447. 



5 Essex 'Naturalist, i. 251. 6 Reliquary, 1895, p. 80. 



7 Essex Arch. Sue. Trans, n.s. vii. 252, 400. 

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