MISCELLANEOUS DENEHOLE NOTES, l906. 11
the shafts at Hangman's Wood we found no fragments of chalk, but saw that
the gravel and sand had been spread very evenly over the surface ; an idiotic-
waste of labour in the case of bell-pits ; while the preservation of the original
flattened contour of the ground would be absolutely necessary to hide the
position of secret storehouses from the invading marauder.
The Messrs. Forster do not appear to grasp as thoroughly as might have
been expected the absurdity involved in the concentration of these pits—if for
chalk—just where the excavators obtained the least return for their labour. No
doubt (as they say) people do foolish things in mining even at the present day.
But they never do anything equivalent to the concentration of sixty or seventy
shafts where a single one would be sufficient to show that the depth to the
Chalk- the material required—is unusually great, when it obviously abounds at
the surface within a mile. The absurdities of primitive man never have arisen
from a want of keen surface observation of things within his own district, and
concerning his own primary needs, but mainly from unsound generalizations.
They also remark that "it is very suggestive that we find such a collection of
pits in Hangman's Wood—a place which must always have been waste land—
while the tract where Chalk is the surface rock was probably cultivated from an
early date." In the first place, Hangman's Wood is now waste land simply
because the existence of the pits there obviously makes it useless for either
ploughing or pasture. Secondly, bare Chalk is everywhere one of the least
attractive formations to the farmer, its main product being a short grass suitable
for hardy sheep, as on the North and South Downs, and on Salisbury Plain.
On the other hand, in this district of Essex, as in others elsewhere, a surface bed
of Old River Gravel (like that at Hangman's Wood is specially attractive both to
farmers and to settlers in towns and villages. West Thurrock, Grays Thurrock,
and Little Thurrock, southward, and Stifford, northward of Hangman's Wood,
are all wholly, or mainly, on Old River Gravel. The bare Chalk between them
shows scarcely any houses and an abundance of open chalk pits, and is valuable
simply from its chalk quarries, which have been greatly enlarged of late years.
Here, as elsewhere, the bare Chalk forms the least attractive area to both farmer
and settler, and to the scanty population of fifteen hundred or two thousand
years ago it must have seemed even less worth cultivation than in more
recent times.
1 am indebted to Professor Meldola for calling my attention to some remarks
on deneholes in Roman Britain by the Rev. Edward Conybeare, published by
the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, in which the view that they
were pits for chalk is taken. I was the less prepared for this information from the
fact that in Roman Britain, by the Rev. H. M. Scarth, published a few years
earlier, in the same series, by the same excellent Society, the writer tends to Mr.
Spurrell's view (whom he quotes) that they were storehouses for grain.
Mr. Conybeare gives the well-known quotation from Pliny, first brought
forward in 1867, by Mr. Roach Smith, to explain the nature of deneholes.
Pliny remarks (as translated by Mr. Smith) that chalk is obtained "by
means of pits sunk like wells with narrow mouths, to the depth sometimes of one
hundred feet, where they branch out like the veins of mines, and this kind is
chiefly used in Britain."
As I have remarked elsewhere, this description is about equally applicable to
the deneholes of Hangman's Wood and to the very different flint workings at
Grimes Graves and Cissbury. In short, it is interesting simply as hearsay infor-