48 
III. 
On Deneholes. 
By T. V. Holmes, F.G.S., M.A.I. 
[Bead October 28th, 1882.] 
Plates I. and H . 1 
It appears to me that the great majority of ancient 
“Deneholes and artificial caves with vertical entrances”— 
to adopt the title of Mr. Spnrrell’s excellent paper 2 —may be 
grouped either with the flint-workings of Cissbury and Grimes 
Graves, nea,r Brandon, or with the Deneholes (dew-holes) of 
Bexley and Grays. Numerous pits, scattered over the chalk 
of South-Eastern England, show affinities more or less pro¬ 
nounced with one or other of these two classes; while others 
exist the primary purpose of which is now doubtful, in 
consequence of the modifications they have undergone from 
time to time. The chalk, at once soft and easily worked, yet 
firm and coherent, and containing in its upper beds bands of 
flint invaluable in the Stone ages, was excavated for a variety 
of purposes. In addition to workings below the surface, any 
person who may visit one of the grandest specimens of a 
hill-fort, Maiden Castle, near Dorchester, will there see the 
steep slopes, rising fifty or sixty feet above the ditches that 
separate them, looking as even and fresh as though they 
were the work of the present century rather than of pre¬ 
historic times. The ease, or comparative ease, with which 
chalk could he worked with primitive implements is, no 
doubt, one of the chief reasons of the abundance of liill-forts 
or cities in a chalk country. Chalk, indeed, had an influence 
1 [The Club is indebted to Mr. Holmes’s generosity for the two plates 
accompanying this paper. An account of the two preliminary visits 
made to the Hangman’s Wood Deneholes will be found in the ‘ Pro¬ 
ceedings,’ under dates June 17th and September 9tli, 1882 .—Ed.] 
2 1 Archaeological Journal,’ 1881. 
