ON A RECENT SUBSIDENCE AT MUCKING, ESSEX. 251
they were nevertheless recognised by their traditional name. On
p. 41 of Palin's Stifford and its Neighbourhood, Mr. R.
Meeson says :—"A curious feature of the district is the occur-
rence of the Dane-holes as they are called by the country people,"
etc. (the italics are mine). He looks upon them as "simply
excavations to obtain chalk for lime-burning,'' a view which the
remark of the young labourer's father at Billericay is in itself
sufficient to refute. In such a matter, indeed, the view of a man.
ignorant of and consequently free from the influence of anti-
quarian theories is of special value. And as apparently the
caving in of a denehole at, or near, Billericay was not an
excessively unusual occurrence in the experience of an agricul-
tural labourer of middle or old age in 1871, this recognition of
them there seems to suggest that they were known and used by
the agricultural population down to a comparatively modern
period. And the few broken tiles found in this Billericay pit,
unsatisfactory as they may be as affording evidence of its
antiquity, are at least important as human work found in it. For
as these pits were mainly storehouses for grain and other
vegetable produce, and were often strengthened where necessary
by timber supports, their sudden collapse would leave in the
ruins few objects of au imperishable kind besides the bricks or
tiles which may have been used in their construction. Old
villages and farmhouses are, in the great majority of cases, on
sandy or gravelly soil, for the sake of the water supply attainable
at a moderate depth ; and Billericay is no exception to this
general rule. But underground chambers in such strata would
have special need of an approximately water-tight roof. This
might be afforded by a covering of tiles above a timber frame-
work. Decay of the timber would in time cause a sudden
collapse, with the result that tiles would naturally be the first
and possibly the only durable objects of man's handiwork to be
discovered by digging.
A paper, entitled "Miscellaneous Notes on Deneholes,"
which I read before the Essex Field Club on October 27th, 1883,
ends with the following note, re-introduced here on account of
its bearing on the Mucking subsidences and their probable
explanation.
" Norfolk
My friend Mr. H. B. Woodward, of the Geological Survey, has kindly sent
me the following account of the discovery of some buried wheat near Lammas