AT HANGMAN'S WOOD, GRAYS.
227
only would the pit below have become open to inspection, but it
would have formed a centre from which others, now closed, might
have been entered by tunnelling, with the great advantage of an open
shaft for ventilation. Thus our work was carried on both above and
below ground.
In this Report we shall, in the first place, deal with the surface
work; secondly, with our tunnelling and its results; and thirdly, with
such examination as we have been able to make of the heaps of sand
and gravel which cover the floor of each denehole. In our con-
cluding remarks we shall discuss the evidence bearing upon the age
of the deneholes and the purposes of their makers.
Firstly, as to our surface work. In the space between the shafts of
the pits numbered 7,8,9,10 and 11, we had a trench cut about two feet
broad, two feet six inches deep, and twenty-five yards long ; while
another, about fifteen yards long, was made on the western side of the
open-shafted pit No. 5. No human relics were observable in either
case. But we saw that when the shafts were sunk the gravel, first
removed, had been spread very evenly over the adjacent surface, and
that the Thanet Sand beneath had then been treated in like manner,
so as to preserve the original flattened contour of the ground. Not
a single fragment of chalk could be seen. Of course chalk is a much
more soluble material than sand and gravel, but had heaps of it
even two or three feet high, out of the thousands of tons extracted,
been allowed to remain here and there they would hardly have been
dissolved away entirely, leaving no trace behind. This care shown
by the denehole makers for the even diffusion of the sand and gravel
and the removal of the chalk—which, when fresh cut, is a singularly
bright and conspicuous material—seems to imply a strong desire to
preserve secrecy as to the positions of these pits.
Our other surface operation consisted, as already stated, in an
endeavour to open out a shaft from the top. That fixed upon
is some distance eastward of the group we have opened out
(see Map of the Wood on Plate iii.) and promised, from the
slightness of the depression round it, to repay our exertions by
disclosing an easily unstopped shaft above an unchoked dene-
hole. But digging showed that the shallowness of the hollow was
apparently due to artificial filling in of a more solid kind than we
had anticipated. We were informed, indeed, by agricultural labourers
and others, who had resided many years in the district, that many
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