On Deneholes. 53
of. the remarkable shaft and cavern in Eltham Park (as an
example of what was originally in all probability a Dene-
hole), in strata identical with those of Blackheath. It was
accidentally discovered in 1878 by a workman, who, being
sent down a disused drain, found himself at the top of a shaft
which was afterwards determined to be 140 feet deep, and
terminated in a chamber in the chalk, about 30 by 50 feet,
and 9 to 91/2 feet high. The shaft was lined with courses of
brick and chalk, and was about 4 feet 1 inch in diameter. It
is described by Mr. W. M. Flinders Petrie in the Proc. Roy.
Archaeol. Inst., March, 1878. In Mr. Spurrell's paper,
however, will be found mention of evidence of the existence
of Deneholes in Charlton Park and Kidbrook, where the
strata are precisely the same as those of Blackheath. It
may fairly be assumed that any Deneholes so deep, and
comparatively difficult to make, as those of Blackheath,
Charlton, and Eltham, must be of later date than those of
Bexley and Grays.
At Bexley there is a remarkable concentration of Deneholes
in two wooded spots, called Stankey and Cavey, Spring, each
of which is about equal in area to Hangman's Wood, the
scene of our recent descents. The shafts are about equally
close together, and their average depth is nearly the same in
all three places. The strata sunk through are also identical,
being either Thanet sand alone or Thanet sand with a slight
capping of old river gravel. The surface of the ground at
Cavey Spring and Stankey is slightly above, and at Hang-
man's Wood rather below, the 100 feet contour-line. The
Deneholes in these three places were evidently the work of
people with similar objects and similar ways of effecting
them. In each case the excavators have chosen to sink
through from forty to sixty feet of overlying beds before they
penetrated the chalk, though in each case there is a broad
expanse of bare chalk within a mile. Nor can this have
occurred simply through geological ignorance, for if we
suppose them so unobservant as not to have noticed the
connection between flints at the surface and chalk below—
a matter in which a savage would be especially acute—they