48
III.
On Deneholes.
By T. V. Holmes, F.G.S., M.A.I.
[Read October 28th, 1882.]
Plates I. and II.1
It appears to me that the great majority of ancient
"Deneholes and artificial caves with vertical entrances"—
to adopt the title of Mr. Spurrell's excellent paper2—may be
grouped either with the flint-workings of Cissbury and Grimes
Graves, near Brandon, or with the Deneholes (dan-holes) of
Bexley and Grays. Numerous pits, scattered over the chalk
of South-Eastern England, show affinities more or less pro-
nounced with one or other of these two classes; while others
exist the primary purpose of which is now doubtful, in
consequence of the modifications they have undergone from
time to time. The chalk, at once soft and easily worked, yet
firm and coherent, and containing in its upper beds bands of
flint invaluable in the Stone ages, was excavated for a variety
of purposes. In addition to workings below the surface, any
person who may visit one of the grandest specimens of a
hill-fort, Maiden Castle, near Dorchester, will there see the
steep slopes, rising fifty or sixty feet above the ditches that
separate them, looking as even and fresh as though they
were the work of the present century rather than of pre-
historic times. The ease, or comparative ease, with which
chalk could be worked with primitive implements is, no
doubt, one of the chief reasons of the abundance of hill-forts
or cities in a chalk country. Chalk, indeed, had an influence
1 [The Club is indebted to Mr. Holmes's generosity for the two plates
accompanying this paper. An account of the two preliminary visits
made to the Hangman's Wood Deneholes will be found in the 'Pro-
ceedings,' under dates June 17th and September 9th, 1882.—Ed.]
2 'Archeological Journal,' 1881.