8 MISCELLANEOUS DENEHOLE NOTES, I906.
right away, and I was merely told that they had been there. The
roof of the main and other passages also had gone, but a portion
of the roof of C, of A and of G remains. Nothing was found
in them, but the men are to clear some loam out at the end of
chamber A in a day or two. The rough sides of the chambers .
(which are evidently in their original state) seem to spoil the
idea of a storehouse or of a dwelling, and hence I conclude that
they are merely chambers from which chalk was once procured.
The soil overhead was not a wood, as is usual, but cultivated
land. However, history records that all that part of the ground
once belonged to the Knights Templars and Knights Hospitallers.
Mr. Havlock, the manager, thinks that these chambers were
Rough Ground-plan of Passages and Chambers in the Chalk-Cliff at Purfleet.
J. W. Hayes, 1900.
entered by a sloping tunnel from the surface, but my own
opinion is that they are sets of chambers connected with central
shafts, as at Bexley and elsewhere, and in some cases these
chambers ran into one another afterwards. About 20 yards from
the long passage I noticed the remains of what I take to be an
ordinary trefoil-pattern denehole, but the shaft, of course, is now
cut away. In Hangman's Wood, Stifford and Bexley, the shafts
went through from 50 to go ft. of soil, but here they must have
merely gone through 8 to 12 ft. In two of the chambers there
are little holes in the side of the roof, widening out a bit above
(say, from 6 inches to 10 inches), and the basins contained a red
and black mould, some of which I preserved. I did not examine
very carefully for marks on the walls, but if you come in time
we can do so."