296 Charles Dcmson — -Ancient and Modem "Bene Holes." 



When asked why they do not run galleries and mine the stone 

 with timbered and propped sides, they say that the way they 

 do it occupies less time, is least expensive, and that they work 

 always in the same general design because they know, by experience, 

 that it is a safe one. Indeed, the whole operation of digging a well 

 and getting out the stone is only a matter of a few days ; and they 

 then fill one pit with the debris from another. Their rule of thumb 

 formula as to whether a shaft will pay is : "A foot of dirt to an inch 

 of stone = that pays." The deepest bed of limestone at Worge 

 Farm and Perch Hill Farm, Brightling, is three feet thick ; it 

 however runs as thick as four feet in other places. The price 

 of the stone is 4s. per yard, and the men have to pay Is. 9d. per 

 yard as a royalty to the landlord (Is. Qd.) and tenant (3d.). The 

 workmen clear about 2s. 6cL to 3s. per day. The stone is carted 

 a radius of five miles over hilly country. 



The limestone has, however, a bad trick of " thinning out " very 

 rapidly within a short distance, which cannot be discovered from the 

 surface; and jDartly for this reason, and partly for the economy of 

 the surface space, the pits usually occur in clusters (occasionally 

 one may see these pits at work while another gang are quarrying 

 the stone on the surface where it crops out about 200 yards away). 

 On all sides one may see circular depressions caused by subsidences 

 of the old pits having been insufiiciently filled up. Besides these 

 " bell pits " which I have mentioned I should point out that in 

 ages past this system of working was the common one among the 

 ironworkers of Sussex for procuring the iron stone or ore in 

 the "Wadhurst Clay" and the " Fairlight Clays " ^ ("Hastings 

 Wealden Beds"). Large numbers of these pits remain in the 

 woods, but on the pastures and arable fields they are usually less 

 traceable. Waste pits do not occur in connection with these " myne 

 pits," because the lime and marl obtained in digging them was 

 used as a flux for smelting the iron and top as a dressing in 

 cultivation.^ The chambers are very rarely connected by levels. 

 As these pits occur in association with slag heaps containing Koman 

 remains it is probable that the method of mining is at least as old 

 as the period of the Eoman occupation of Britain. The well-known 

 passage from Pliny (the Elder, a.d. 23-79) concerning this class 

 of excavation may refer to these iron mines. In describing the 

 early process of " marling," he says : " Another kind of white chalk 

 is * Argentaria,' ^ which is brought from a depth of a hundred feet, 

 the pits usually made narrow at the mouth, internally as in metal 

 mines the vein spreading out (or widening, ' spatiante vena ').* They 



^ Near Crowboroiigh Warren New "Water Mill. 



" Beside the writer's own authority on the subject may be quoted Mr. "William 

 Topley's memoir on the Weald Geological Survey: see titles " Iron Works" and 

 " Lime." 



^ Argentaria (whitening), so called (as we learn from another passage in PUny) 

 because of the brightness it imparted to silver when rubbed with it (see book 35, 

 chap. Iviii, Pliny's " Natural History "). 



* This passage has been misquoted by modern writers as "the veins running about." 



