PEN PITS. 
101 
hood. ‘ The raised border of earth and stones ’ is simply the waste 
tipped round the edge of the pit, as they always do at the present day. 
The ‘ opening on one side ’ was of course necessary for getting to the 
mouth. Nearly all the pits are constantly full of water in wet weather. 
The date of the ironstone workings is generally about the end of the 
fourteenth and early part of the fifteenth centuries.” 
“ Though these ‘ British settlements ’ have to be given up, I found 
a real one on the [Yorkshire] moors. It consisted of a number of 
circular depressions a few inches deep, not pits, which were made 
simply by paring off the peaty turf so as to get a dry sandy floor. In 
each were a number of flint flakes and spoilt tools, very often calcined; 
the manufacture seems to have been carried on inside the hut, for very 
few occurred away from the circles. The flint is black flint, which 
must have come from South Lincolnshire or Norfolk.” 
Mr. Davey has mentioned (in his work previously cited) that “ In 
the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, is preserved a model of an entire 
ancient village which was recently disclosed at Standlake [near 
Witney]. The Curator informed me that some of the pits were four 
feet wide and two feet deep, while even the largest did not exceed six 
feet in diameter and four feet in depth.” 
Oil the Greensand hills of Devonshire there are numerous hollows 
which have been described as iron pits by Mr. P. O. Hutchinson. 
Thus he mentions hollows near Kentisbere and other places, which are 
sometimes called “ Ash Pits.” Others occur near Dunkeswell, varying 
from eight to ten feet deep, and from twenty to thirty feet in diameter. 
Bits of ironstone and haematite were noticed in the neighbourhood. 
He observes that, “ There are numerous pieces of scoria to be found in 
the fields near Nortchcott, in the parish of Uffculme * * * indicat¬ 
ing that there had been a smelting-place not far off. In a field at 
Tudborough, near Hemyock, the plough continually turns up cinders, 
and doubtless there had been a bloomary or melting-pit near them.”* 
In accounting for the groups of pits that occur in so many 
places, Mr. Hutchinson quotesf the following passage from Smiles’ 
“ Industrial Biography,” which refers to some old pits found at Leeds:— 
“ In seeking for ore, the excavator seems to have dug a pit about six 
feet in diameter, though this size of course much varied; and when 
he came down to the ironstone, he worked away all round as far as he 
could go without letting the sides fall in. Instead of advancing 
straight forward, and digging back or throwing back, as the phrase is, 
or instead of proceeding to make a gallery excavation, as the miners 
call it, he got out of his pit and then sunk another.” 
On the Mendip Hills the old mining operations are generally 
indicated by shallow pits sunk near to one another, or by long lines of 
excavations, when a vein has been followed at the surface. 
According to Mr. W. Topley, the ironstone workings in the Weald 
were mostly bell-pits, about six feet in diameter at the top, and wideii- 
* “ Trans. Devon Assoc.,” vol. v., 187^, p. 48. 
t “ Trans. Devon Assoc.,” vol. v., p. 48. 
