Miscellaneous Notes on Deneholes.
109
several chalk weights, with a hole near the top by which to
suspend them. These 'finds' were taken as proof positive
of an occupation as far back as 300 b. c. But, more remark-
able still, especially as showing the probable use to which
these pits were some of them put, at the bottom of one of
them was found a quantity of grains of wheat, barley, and
oats—black with age and decay, but still preserving each
their well-defined form; and there can exist, therefore, but
little doubt that these pits were the storehouses of the
inhabitants of the camp. In another of the pits the explorers
came across a large stone which had evidently been employed
for grinding corn." The Winklebury explored was the camp
of that name on the borders of Wiltshire and Dorset, not the
Winklebury near Basingstoke.
The Isle of Portland.
A short notice in the 'English Mechanic and World of
Science' of the excursion of the Geologists' Association and
Essex Field Club to the Deneholes of Hangman's Wood in the
summer of 1853 attracted the attention of Mr. A. M. Wallis, a
quarryman and fossil-collector living in the Isle of Portland.
He thereupon wrote to Dr. Foulerton, Honorary Secretary to
the Geologists' Association, describing and sending drawings
of some remarkable beehive-shaped excavations recently laid
bare during quarry-extensions in Portland. Mr. Wallis's
letter having been referred to me at the meeting of the
Geologists' Association in December, 1883, I visited the Isle
of Portland in March, 1884, in order to see something of
these holes, and an account of this visit is given in Proc.
Geol. Assoc, vol. viii., Part 7 (July, 1884). No holes of this
kind have ever been discovered in Portland previous to the
last two years or thereabouts, and they have been found by
the quarrymen when removing some fifteen or twenty feet of
Purbeck Beds at the surface in order to get at the Portland
stone beneath. Those hitherto discovered have all been a
little eastward of the road between Yeales and Easton,
towards the northern end of the island. These beehive-
shaped pits were all walled-in by pieces of the rubble-stone in
which they are mainly excavated, and varied considerably in
size. The largest chambers were seven or eight feet in
height, and about nine feet in diameter at the bottom, the
floor being eleven or twelve feet beneath the surface of the
ground. The smallest chambers were only about four feet
high, and six feet in diameter or thereabouts. The entrance
to them was a narrow opening in the middle of the roof, just