10 MISCELLANEOUS DENEHOLE NOTES, I906.
The name "Denehole."
The highest authority on this question, Dr. J. A. H
Murray, states, in the greatest of dictionaries, that denehole means
danehole not denhole, as we supposed when the Hangman's
Wood Denehole Exploration Report was written. This
interpretation of the traditional name for the pits more or less
near the Thames in Kent and Essex, and near the coast of
Durham, tends, in itself, greatly to strengthen the view that
deneholes were secret storehouses and hiding places, and that
the enemies chiefly feared were pirates. Of course the Danes
are associated with these secret storehouses simply as the latest
and most formidable of pirates: as the men who plundered
Egfert's monastery at the mouth of the Wear in A.D. 794 ; who
ravaged Sheppey in 832, and remained over winter there in
855 ; who sat down at Fulham on the Thames in 879 ; who were
in great force at the mouth of the Thames in 893 ; and had towed
their ships up the Thames and the Lea in 895, &c. &c.
Allusions to Deneholes in recent publications.
" In the Essex Naturalist for July, 1905, there are some remarks by the
present water on the Chislehurst Caves, together with a small portion of a plan
of them made by Mr. T. E. Forster, to illustrate the nature of the workings
there. A paper by Messrs. T. K. and R. H. Forster, in the Journal of the
Royal Archaeological Association for August, 1904, on the Chislehurst Caves,
contains also some remarks on the deneholes of Hangman's Wood, the authors
inclining to the chalk-pit hypothesis. As regards their shape they fail to notice
that the decisive point against their having been pits for chalk lies not in the
details of their forms, but in the careful separation of each pit from its
neighbour. This (on the chalk-pit hypothesis) involves a most unnecessary
multiplication of shafts. On the other hand, if they were family storehouses, it is
precisely what we should expect. In bell-pits, again, the material from a new
pit in course of formation goes to fill up the nearest old pit. In the deneholes
of Hangman's Wood each pit simply contains the very variable amount of material
which has, during the course of centuries of disuse, tumbled down the shaft..
Examination of the mounds at the foot of the shaft in the open pits showed in
each case that they were composed, towards their base, mainly of gravel, with
large flints taken from the Chalk, and occasional lumps of chalk ; the upper part
consisting almost entirely of Thanet-sand. The large flints had evidently been
used for steining (or lining) the upper part of the shaft, where the surface
gravel exists. As this lining gave way the gravel had fallen till the mouth of
the shaft assumed the funnel-like appearance at the surface which they all now
have. The part of the shaft consisting of the Thanet-sand stood best ; the foot-
holes in this part of the shafts are still more or less visible. And at Bexley the
enlargement at the surface, where there is no gravel above the sand, is very slight.
Then, when we cut trenches (see Denehole Report) on the surface between