On Deneholes. 55
No. 3, though their length is about the same. To give more
space in No. 2 the excavators would naturally convert it into
a likeness of No. 3, by adding a sixth chamber, and by
increasing the breadth of all the chambers. But this
increase of breadth would make the partitions between the
chambers very thin, till at last a hole would appear in one of
them, such as we saw in No. 3. Enlargement of this hole
would give more space, and eventually produce a pillar on
one side of the shaft. Soon a corresponding pillar would be
similarly formed on the other side of the shaft. And by
adding to the width of each chamber, without widening its
mouth, the cavern would come, in time, to be supported by
six pillars, each pillar standing in the space between what
were once the mouths of the separate chambers. It would
then assume the shape of No. 2 Pit, Stankey, as it was
before the removal of the two pillars on one side of the
shaft, which has caused so great a downfall from the roof.
In No. 4 Stankey, we see a pillar formed on one side
of the shaft, and another in process of formation on the
other side.
In the case of pits the shafts of which are open, it must
always be somewhat uncertain how much they have been
modified since they ceased to be used for the purposes for
which they were originally intended. I am inclined to think,
myself, that either symmetry or a want of symmetry, which
appears merely to mark a stage of the slow evolution I have
endeavoured to trace, points towards the conclusion that pits
in which they only appear have been altered, in no material
degree, since they were used by the race that originally
constructed them. Thus in Pit No. 2, Hangman's Wood,
the only part that I should take to be of decidedly later date
than the rest is the hole at one end of one of the two longest
chambers, which is utterly out of harmony with what appears
to be the, original mode of development, and is in all
likelihood the work of men to whom it was unfamiliar.
Careful examination of the heap at the bottom even of an
open shaft will, I trust, give some information as to its
original date, while to drive a gallery from an open pit to an