250 ON A RECENT SUBSIDENCE AT MUCKING, ESSEX.
would soon be obvious to them, on trial, that nothing whatever
was gained (around their dwellings) by an extra ten or twenty
feet of depth, and that, in strata consisting of sands and gravels,
with an occasional clayey band, though a foot or two of clay at
the surface tended to keep a pit dry, a clay band near the
bottom of the excavation tended to keep it wet.
Thus the three or four feet of London Clay at the surface
where the recent Mucking subsidence took place would tend to
keep dry any chambers in the sands beneath. The section
where the older depressions westward exist is probably similar,
with the addition, in their case, of a few feet of old Thames
gravel. And the shape of the newest subsidence decidedly
suggests the former presence of a large chamber, or group of
chambers, at no great depth in. the sands, which has now
collapsed. In all probability a similar statement would be true
of the depressions in the field westward. And it seems to me
that the only probable explanation of their existence is that they
mark the site of ancient pits of the denehole class, once used as
granaries and storehouses.
In Palin's Move about Stifford the author remarks, p. 40 (after
quoting an account by Mr. R. Lloyd Williams of the dene-
holes of Hangman's Wood and elsewhere) :—
" We may add that a 'Danehole' partly filled up is to be found in the
Stifford chalk quarry. But to show that chalk was not the object in making
them, it may be mentioned that a series of them in Mucking Woods was filled
up within the last few years, and these were in sand."
And on the same page he notes that :—
" Mr. J. E. K. Cutts, in an interesting paper on Billericay, read to the
Essex Archaeological Society at its annual meeting at Chelmsford, 1871, says,
Not far from this tumulus is an excavation like a gravel pit, which the young
labourer's father had told him was a 'Denehole' which had 'caved in.' He
(Mr. Cutts) dug down 3 feet, but found nothing but a few broken tiles."
We have seen that at the Mucking hole the Chalk is
probably about 150ft. beneath the surface. Now at Billericay,
which is about eight miles nearly due north of it, and on the
Bagshot Beds, which overlie the London Clay, the distance to
the Chalk from the surface must certainly be more than 500ft.
Yet. we find "the young labourer's father" had no doubt that
the excavation there was a "denehole" which had "caved in,"
and his recognition of it as a denehole showed that, at a place
where there could never have been a denehole ending in Chalk,