On Deneholes. 
51 
thick Woolwich sand occurs also at Bexley, where (as is the 
case in many of the woods about Dartford) shafts forty to 
fifty feet in depth have been sunk through it at an early 
period for the purpose of extracting the subjacent chalk, as is 
now done at Beading and Plumstead brick-kilns. Mr. 
Hasted, in his ‘ History of Kent,’ conjectures that many of 
these quarries were excavated by the Saxons as places of 
retreat in times of danger. He states that some of them are 
twenty fathoms in depth, and that they are to be found also 
near Faversliam, and at Fritwood, on the south of Murston 
Passage, near Milton. The explanation that is suggested by 
the geological position of all these places appears to be much 
more satisfactory.” 
We have seen that the shafts of Cissbury and Brandon 
were variable in size and shape, though usually of much 
greater diameter than those of Deneholes; were larger at the 
top than at the bottom, and were connected together by a 
network of low galleries from about three to five feet high, 
which followed the course of a particular flint-band. The 
Deneholes of Bexley or Grays have, on the contrary, shafts 
perfectly cylindrical in shape, of very small diameter,—two 
feet six inches to three feet, where they have suffered but 
little from the weather,—and the chambers at the bottom are 
lofty and symmetrical, from ten to thirty feet in height or 
thereabouts. There is no communication between adjacent 
shafts, though they are often as close together as those at 
Grimes Graves, and they do not appear to owe their shape to 
any desire to extract any particular band of flint. The shaft 
of a Denehole may be wholly in the chalk, or may be almost 
entirely in the Thanet sand and other overlying beds. It is 
obvious, however, that those Deneholes which differ from 
pits of the Grimes Graves class in geological position, as well 
as in structure, will most surely illustrate the primary 
intention of their makers. 
No better examples could consequently be chosen for 
investigation than those which the Essex Field Club pro¬ 
poses to examine in Hangman’s Wood; or those at Bexley, 
which correspond so closely to them in structure, and in 
