T. V. Holmes — On Deneholes and Bell Pits. 4 55 



tliem when flowing at a considerably higher level than the Marclyke 

 at Stifford, must have had a course from north to south from Stifford 

 to Grays, not westward from Stiiford like the Mardyke of the 

 present day. 



It is easy to understand the existence of pits of this class ; the 

 Chalk, where Tertiary beds are absent, is frequently covered by 

 irregular deposits of various kinds, and where the covering of the 

 Chalk is thin there ai'e usually many pipes in it. But a short 

 shaft allows the extraction of pure chalk at a depth to which pipes 

 seldom penetrate. In this case, no pipes having been found, 

 opening out had been begun on reaching the Chalk. Mr. E. Meeson, 

 at a meeting of the Archaeological Institute in 1869,' stated that 

 deep cavities known as ' daneholes ' existed in every field in the 

 neighbourhood of Grays Thurrock, below which there is " a sub- 

 stratum of Chalk." He does not give the positions of any of them, 

 nor does he mention Hangman's Wood, the pits which he had in 

 view being evidently such as caused these subsidences. In one 

 case, however, he states that on opening one of them he found it 

 full of Eoman burial vases, which had been crushed by the fall of 

 the roof. 



It becomes obvious, on consideration, that we should expect to 

 find pits of this class made to obtain chalk for purely local use in 

 agriculture, not highly concentrated in certain spots but scattered 

 here and there in the way mentioned by Mr. Meeson. For in 

 Central and Northern Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk, chalk was until 

 lately obtained for marling the land, not directly from that formation, 

 but from the Chalky Boulder-clay, which occupies a large proportion 

 of the surface of those counties. Thousands of marl-pits may be 

 seen scattered over the Eastern Counties, mostly disused. They are 

 all open, though the uppermost two or three feet of the Boulder-clay 

 is useless for marling, having lost the Chalk it originally contained 

 through the action of rain. 



On the other hand, where chalk is required for a broad area 

 outside that in which it is easily obtainable, large open chalk-pits 

 would best supply the want. The huge open chalk-pit near Stifford, 

 west of the subsidences, must have supplied much chalk for the 

 district northward, in which the Chalk lies deeper and deeper and 

 there is no Chalky Boulder-clay. Immense pits like those at 

 Grays and around Gravesend, close to the Thames, would furnish, 

 what might be best conveyed by water up the rivers of Essex 

 and Suffolk. 



Few old workings in Chalk are better known than Grime's 

 Graves, near Brandon, on the borders of Norfolk and Suffolk, which 

 were examined by Canon Greenwell many years ago.'- He describes 

 them as being 254 in number and as covering 20 to 21 acres of 

 ground. One which he explored was 39 feet deep, the shaft being 

 28 feet in diameter at the mouth and gradually narrowing to 

 a width of 12 feet at the bottom. At the surface about 13 feet of 



^ Archaeological Journal, yoI. xxvi, p. 191. 



2 See Journal of the Ethnological Society, new series, toI. ii (1870), p. 419. 



