MISCELLANEOUS DENEHOLE NOTES, 1906. 9
I arranged with Mr. Hayes to visit the Purfleet chalk-pit on
March 19th, but learnt on the 17th that unforeseen circumstances
would compel him to be away from home on that date. How-
ever, I went myself, knowing that delay implied some additional
destruction of these chambers. Through the courtesy of Mr. E.
G. Haylock I was enabled to see enough of them to be glad that
Mr. Hayes had seen them when their original features were
more obvious. I noticed the extreme smoothness of the floor of
these chambers where it was visible, a smoothness reminding
me of that of the floor of the Hangman's Wood deneholes, and,
in itself, suggesting long domestic use rather than mere excava-
tions for chalk. I could not see any spot which suggested the
site of a shaft. The position of these subterranean chambers
was on the northern side of Beacon Hill, where the enlarge-
ment of the great chalk-pit is now progressing.1
The Pit at Eltham Park.
Early in the year 1881, when residents in the district around
Blackheath were much interested in the then recent subsidences
there, and a committee had been formed for the exploration of
one of them, I accompanied Prof. J. K. Laughton, chairman of
the committee, to Eltham Park, where a deep shaft ending in a
chamber in the Chalk had been accidentally discovered in 1878,
and had been described by Mr. W. M. Flinders Petrie in a
paper read at a meeting of the Royal Archaeological on
March 1st, 1878. Mr. Jackson, junior, showed us the spot at
which the shaft had been discovered and I marked it on a six-
inch to the mile map. The newer edition of the map (1898)
shows, in addition, simply the Blackheath and Bexley Heath
Railway. But during the last year or two Eltham Park has
been much cut up for building. And at present the site of the
shaft can only be described as a few feet east of the path
crossing the railway, which would, if prolonged southward, lead
to the mansion, and as slightly nearer the main part of the
mansion than the railway.
1 I have just been informed by Mr. Hayes (Feb. 25. 1907) that a small denehole has
recently fallen in about quarter of a mile from the main road, near Aveley. It had four
chambers, and the depth of the shaft was twelve feet. He adds that the owner of a large
field of 80 acres there told him that some 15 years ago he had counted more than 40 such
holes with chambers in that one field, and that his men had filled them up as well as they
could to save the land for ploughing. The concentration of so many pits in a limited area
certainly suggests that their makers needed them for some domestic purpose, not for the
sake of the material extracted.