ivi 
Journal of Proceedings. 
Saturday, September 9th, 1882. A Second Visit to the Dene- 
holes at Little Thurrock, Essex. 
A meeting in Hangman’s Wood was held on this day in order to 
explore one or two of the open holes left unvisited on June 17th (‘ Pro¬ 
ceedings,’ iii., xxviii.) 
The Directors were Mr. Holmes, Mr. Worthington Smith, and Mr. 
Walker. A few members of the Club went down to Grays overnight, and 
others, numbering about forty, arrived by various trains during the day, 
which was gloriously fine. Among the visitors were Rev. Brooke Lam¬ 
bert, M.A., and Mr. H. W. Jackson, F.G.S., President and Secretary of 
the Lewisham and Blackheatli Scientific Association, and Mr. S. J. 
Mackie, of the ‘ Standard ’ newspaper. Mr. Worthington Smith went 
down to Tilbury, and made a little detour by Mucking, Horndon-on-the- 
Hill and Orsett to Hangman’s Wood. In a gravel-pit at Mucking, about 
four feet deep, he found a Palaeolithic implement, with the point broken 
off, and several “ Hakes ” with it. He also found several Palaeolithic 
flakes in a gravel-pit near Orsett, the excavation being six feet deep. Both 
localities are new, and therefore well worthy of record.* 
Two or three apparently open holes were examined, and found to be 
plugged up with boughs of trees and earth at various depths from the 
surface, but it was nevertheless resolved to attempt the clearance of a 
shaft. A promising-looking pit on the left-hand side of the woodland 
path (No. 8 on small map on Plate II.) was finally selected for the experi¬ 
ment, after several tentative descents had been made by Mr. Walker, Mr. 
Thomas, Mr. W. Cole, and others. Messrs. Brooks, Shoobridge, and Co., 
who showed the Club so much kindness on their former visit to the dene- 
lioles, had made even completer arrangements this time to ensure the 
comfort of the visitors, and make the exploration a success. They had 
four of their men on the ground all day, and these at once set to work to 
remove the obstructions. The task was achieved after fully three hours’ 
labour; shear-legs were placed over the mouth of the hole, a rope passed 
from a capitally-constructed box to a windlass' on the bank, and the 
preparations were complete. The descent was a very different thing from 
that which was made on the 17th of June. Then, one went down at a 
time, either standing in a bucket, which swayed about to the alarm of the 
nervous, or seated upon a stick tied in a loop of the rope. The latter 
was the more comfortable of the two modes, but neither of them was 
comparable to Messrs. Brooks’s box, which was even provided with a 
seat. Ladies, who could not make the descent before, w r ere now enabled 
to do so, and during the day some of them actually did venture into 
the pit. 
* Mr. Smith also gathered, in the stubble fields between Horndon and Orsett, many 
plants of the flesh-colourccl variety of the Pimpernel or “Poor Man’s Weather-glass” 
(Anagallis arvensis, var. carnea, Schrank), a fact which may interest our botanists. 
