Miscellaneous Notes on Deneholes. 
95 
been mainly formed by some active creature, sucli as a wolf, 
hound, or fox, which, after falling down the shaft, had been 
either stopped by rubbish at this point or had managed to 
scramble up to a ledge there from the bottom, which ledge it 
had afterwards enlarged. 
A point worth noting may be raised with regard to the 
conversion of a six-chambered Deneliole into a pillared one. 
It is this :—The Denehole-chambers were evidently increased 
in height by the gradual lowering of the floor. But how (it 
may be asked), when they had attained a height of 16 ft. or 
18 ft., were the upper parts of the partitions between the 
chambers removed, and the roof made smooth and even ? 
The precise mode of operation can be but mere conjecture, 
but the situation would offer no real difficulty. For that 
most primitive of ladders, a ragged fir-stem, was in all 
probability the means of descent into the earliest and rudest 
Deneholes, in which the bee-liive shape made foot-holes out 
of the question. And one or two short ladders of this kind 
would be all that the removers of a partition could possibly 
require in addition to their ordinary implements. 
* 
IY. Notes on the Pits near Lenham, Kent. 
Through the kindness of Mr. J. T. Hatch, a well-known 
resident at Lenham, I had an opportunity, on July 18th, of 
descending one of the best-preserved pits of this neighbour¬ 
hood, and was shown by him the positions of several others 
in various stages of decay. As the pits of this neighbourhood 
have never, so far as I know, been described before, the 
following particulars may be of interest:— 
The village of Lenham lies at the foot of the Chalk escarp¬ 
ment of the North Downs, about nine miles E.S.E. of 
Maidstone. Mr. Spurrell has noted the existence of Dene¬ 
holes about Deptling and Hollingbourne, both similarly 
situated at the foot of the escarpment, but the first-named 
eight miles and the latter four miles away towards the north¬ 
west. Deneholes are also known, he says, at Wormshill, 
Bredgar, Stockbury, and Bodmersham, all places on the dip- 
slope of the chalk, and from two miles to five miles from the 
