98
Miscellaneous Notes on Deneholes.
of descent in the shape of a long ladder. The pit's depth we
found to be about 38 ft., the upper most five or six feet of the
shaft being through loam with flints, the rest of the hole in
chalk. The pit appeared to have been at one time of a
simple bee-hive shape. Prom its sides, however, five galleries
or tunnels had been driven, which radiated from the centre
at nearly equal distances from each other. They varied con-
siderably in height and length. The largest may have been
13 ft. in height at the entrance, and 14 ft. or 15 ft. long ;
while the smallest was 7 ft. to 8 ft. high at the entrance, and
10 ft. long. From their height at the entrance it is possible
that these tunnels may have been begun before the cavern
had quite reached its present depth, though possibly the
action of frost has assisted, by detaching blocks of chalk, to
increase their height to that which we now see, and to add to
their irregularity in size.7 Measuring across from the ends
of two nearly opposite tunnels we found the greatest diameter
to be about 40 ft., that of the circular space at the bottom of
the shaft being about 15 ft. 6 in. At two or three feet below
the surface the diameter of the shaft was not more than
4 ft. 6 in., but it remained narrow but for two or three feet.
It is natural that pits such as these, which are known in
the districts in which they occur as "draw-wells" or "chalk-
wells," and some of which appear to have been utilised in the
present century as a means of obtaining chalk for a top-
dressing, should be supposed to have been made for that
purpose in modern times. But although the arguments
against this view are not so conclusive as they would be in
the case of the Hangman's Wood Pits, the evidence at
Lenham, when carefully examined, by no means favours the
top-dressing theory. For while, as before remarked, all the
pits visited at Lenham are within half a mile of the edge of
the Chalk escarpment, there are large chalk quarries on the
brow of the escarpment just below its top, averaging only
forty to fifty feet less in height above the sea than the
7 But it must not be forgotten that a primitive ladder, such as that by
which the pit was originally entered, would allow the formation of
tunnels of any height.