98 
Miscellaneous Notes on Deneholes. 
of descent in the shape of a long ladder. The pit’s depth we 
found to be about 88 ft., the uppermost five or six feet of the 
shaft being through loam with flints, the rest of the hole in 
chalk. The pit appeared to have been at one time of a 
simple bee-liive shape. From its sides, however, five galleries 
or tunnels had been driven, which radiated from the centre 
at nearly equal distances from each other. They varied con¬ 
siderably in height and length. The largest may have been 
18 ft. in height at the entrance, and 14 ft. or 15 ft. long ; 
while the smallest was 7 ft. to 8 ft. high at the entrance, and 
10 ft. long. From their height at the entrance it is possible 
that these tunnels may have been begun before the cavern 
had quite reached its present depth, though possibly the 
action of frost has assisted, by detaching blocks of chalk, to 
increase their height to that which we now see, and to add to 
their irregularity in size. 7 Measuring across from the ends 
of two nearly opposite tunnels we found the greatest diameter 
to be about 40 ft., that of the circular space at the bottom of 
the shaft being about 15 ft. 6 in. At two or three feet below 
the surface the diameter of the shaft was not more than 
4 ft. 6 in., but it remained narrow but for two or three feet. 
It is natural that pits such as these, which are known in 
the districts in which they occur as “draw-wells” or “chalk- 
wells,” and some of which appear to have been utilised in the 
present century as a means of obtaining chalk for a top¬ 
dressing, should be supposed to have been made for that 
purpose in modern times. But although the arguments 
against this view are not so conclusive as they would be in 
the case of the Hangman’s Wood Pits, the evidence at 
Lenliam, when carefully examined, by no means favours the 
top-dressing theory. For while, as before remarked, all the 
pits visited at Lenliam are within half a mile of the edge of 
the Chalk escarpment, there are large chalk quarries on the 
brow of the escarpment just below its top, averaging only 
forty to fifty feet less in height above the sea than the 
7 But it must not be forgotten that a primitive ladder, such as that by 
which the pit was originally entered, would allow the formation of 
tunnels of any height. 
