On Deneholes. 
53 
of the remarkable shaft and cavern in Eltharn Park (as an 
example of what was originally in all probability a Dene- 
hole), in strata identical wuth those of Blackheatli. It was 
accidentally discovered in 1878 by a workman, who, being 
sent down a disused drain, found himself at the top of a shaft 
which was afterwards determined to be 140 feet deep, and 
terminated in a chamber in the chalk, about 80 by 50 feet, 
and 9 to feet high. The shaft was lined with courses of 
brick and chalk, and was about 4 feet 1 inch in diameter. It 
is described by Mr. W. M. Flinders Petrie in the Proc. Roy. 
Archaeol. Inst., March, 1878. In Mr. Spurrell’s paper, 
however, will be found mention of evidence of the existence 
of Deneholes in Charlton Park and Ixidbrook, where the 
strata are precisely the same as those of Blackheatli. It 
may fairly be assumed that any Deneholes so deep, and 
comparatively difficult to make, as those of Blackheatli, 
Charlton, and Eltharn, must be of later date than those of 
Bexley and Grays. 
At Bexley there is a remarkable concentration of Deneholes 
in two wooded spots, called Stankey and Cavey Spring, each 
of which is about equal in area to Hangman’s Wood, the 
scene of our recent descents. The shafts are about equally 
close together, and their average depth is nearly the same in 
all three places. The strata sunk through are also identical, 
being either Thanet sand alone or Thanet sand with a slight 
capping of old river gravel. The surface of the ground at 
Cavey Spring and Stankey is slightly above, and at Hang¬ 
man’s Wood rather below, the 100 feet contour-line. The 
Deneholes in these three places were evidently the work of 
people with similar objects and similar ways of effecting 
them. In each case the excavators have chosen to sink 
through from forty to sixty feet of overlying beds before they 
penetrated the chalk, .though in each case there is a broad 
expanse of bare chalk within a mile. Nor can this have 
occurred simply through geological ignorance, for if we 
suppose them so unobservant as not to have noticed the 
connection between flints at the surface and chalk below— 
a matter in which a savage would be especially acute—they 
