THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB. 261
other vaults, like ranges of catacombs, led to right and left, and turned back
again, enclosing irregular trapezoids of chalk, the vast piers of rock left to hold
up the 80 or 100 feet of strata overhead. There were hundreds of these cross
passages; even the surveyors, who were most careful not to exaggerate,
estimated that there were quite four miles of them, and as their orientation was
far from regular, nothing was easier than to lose one's sense of direction. Not
PLAN OF THE CHISLEHURST CAVES.
Reproduced by permission, from Mr. Nichols' Paper in the Journal of British Archaeological Association.
even the glaring whiteness of the walls and roof, where the gleam of our lamps
and candles fell, could dispel a profound sense of gloom and mystery ; the silence,
the air of inscrutable antiquity, of these endless branching avenues, gave one the
impression of being set down by night amid the chaos of wandering streets in
some deserted mediaeval city."
In reporting the meeting we cannot do better than quote largely Mr. Baker's
excellent account in the London Standard of February 18th :—
" Members of the club who were familiar with the dene holes near Grays
agreed that the depressions on the surface outside the caves bore some