xviii Journal of Proceedings.
other way. They were privileged to have with them Sir Antonio Brady,
the veteran elephant hunter in Essex. His work was historic—(cheers),—
but happily he himself was not yet historic.
Sir Antonio Brady, after expressing the pleasure he had derived from
the meeting, and from seeing and hearing his old friend, Professor Morris,
discussed at considerable length the various theories which had been put
forth to solve the geological problems which they met with in the deposits
of the Thames Valley.
Mr. Worthington Smith, F.L.S., said he had been to West Tilbury by
an earlier train than the main party, and had walked over the country to
Grays, managing to find four flakes of Palaeolithic age in the high gravels;
he had previously found the butt-end of an implement and several flakes
in the high gravels capping the chalk at Grays Thurrock. Mr. Smith
referred to the numerous "Dane-holes," some open and others filled in, at
Hangman's Wood.* He said these places were doubtless shafts dug in
Neolithic times in quest of the layers of flint found in the chalk, and were
comparable with the pits at Cissbury Camp, Worthing, examined by
General Pitt-Rivers (' Archaeologia,' xlii., 27). Mr. Smith had at different
times found numerous flakes of Neolithic age round these pits, and indeed
had lighted upon some that morning. He strongly advised that the pits
should be investigated by the Essex Field Club, and reported upon. The
rustics in the neighbourhood sometimes descend these places by the aid
of ropes.
* These remarkable relics at Little Thurrock and elsewhere have heen somewhat
perfunctorily noticed by various antiquarian writers from Camden downwards. An
account of them, with a ground-plan of one of the pits, is given in Palin's ' Stifford and
its Neighbourhood,' p. 93, and the same author's ' More about Stifford,' p. 38. From the
latter work we quote the following description, communicated by Mr. E. Lloyd "Williams,
of Grays:—"Hangman's Wood is a small wood, partly in the parish of Little Thurrock
and partly in Orsett. At the south of this wood and on the Chadwell boundary are traces
of numerous pits, which at some time or other must have existed there. Most of them
are now completely filled up or fallen in, but six are still open, three of them almost in
the same state as when originally made. The formation of such as are still comparatively
perfect, and from which it may fairly be conjectured that the others now closed were not
dissimilar, is very curious. A perpendicular shaft of about three feet in diameter, and
like that of an ordinary well, descends to a depth of about seventy-five or eighty feet, the
lower twenty feet or thereabouts of which pass through the chalk stratum, there reached
at a depth of about sixty feet. At the foot of the shaft on each side large chambers are
cut out of the chalk, rather oval in shape, with the arching slightly pointed, and the
floor tolerably flat; though in one instance there appears to have been left intentionally
a rude kind of bench of chalk. Tho measurements of these chambers vary, but their
height, as a rule, is about sixteen feet, length about twenty feet, and width about
fourteen or fifteen feet in the widest part." Mr. Williams conjectures that there must
be nearly fifty of the pits in close contiguity. In Swanscombe and Darenth Woods, in
Kent, there are similar pits, and the recent remarkable subsidences on Blackheath are hy
some considered to be due to the presence of these "Dane-holes," the shafts of which have
been only partially filled in. No sufficient examination in the light of recent archaeo-
logical researches has been yet made of these workings ; and we hope the Club will
adopt Mr. Worthington Smith's suggestion, and institute a practical enquiry into their
nature and probable origin at no distant date.—Ed.