Journal of Proceedings. cci
to send you the following remarks on some peculiarities in the
ancient cemetery there, which are mentioned by Mr. H. Ecroyd Smith
in his interesting paper, published in the Trans. Essex Archaeol. Soc. for
1883. On p. 317 Mr. Smith remarks :
"Another feature, which greatly adds to the interest of the explo-
ration at Walden, was the discovery, beneath the graves, of a number of
pits or circular hollows, and which in some cases had interfered with
the intended position of interments, a few of which lay upon the very
edge of one or other of the pits which, of course, in common with the
graves, are all excavated in the solid chalk. In one or two instances,
adjoining the pits, small hollows were found where some little cooking
may have been practised by ' pebble-boiling'; but the traces of fire being
trivial, together with the absence of hearthstones and the usual instru-
ments of stone and amount of animal refuse remaining about ancient
huts, it is very improbable the pits were ever permanently inhabited.
In the midst of one group, a well-cut cylindrical shaft 21/2 feet wide
evidently formed the medium of descending approach to those sub-
terranean workings, which, like many others in this and other
counties, were carried on for procuring solid chalk for lime, and from
very early times. From the occurrence in the neighbourhood of ancient
British pottery of several kinds, there is good reason to believe a village
with the ordinary circular huts, based in the soil and roofed, existed
here ; the inhabitants of which are as likely as their successors to have
worked these pits either for sale or personal use. There is no doubt that
lime was even then an article of traffic."
Now, though Mr. H. E. Smith says that the well-cut cylindrical shaft
evidently formed the medium of descending approach to subterranean
workings, made for the purpose of procuring solid chalk for lime, we
learned from Mr. Murray Tuke, who conducted us to the spot on April
14th, that the shaft ended in solid chalk, and that there were no traces
whatever of enlargement at its base. Consequently, there can be no
evidence of the existence of subterranean workings at its bottom. And
I need hardly waste time in demonstrating that no people in their senses
can ever have thought of procuring chalk, in a locality where it abounds
at the surface, by simple shafts alone. On the other hand, the fact that
excavations have been made in chalk, at a certain place, gives neither
proof nor presumption, in itself, that they were made for chalk. The
true explanation of the purpose of their makers, in any given case, can
only be rightly deduced from the specific evidence afforded by their
nature, position and surroundings. And here the excavations of which
we have evidence are but the small circular hollows and cylindrical
shaft. As an illustration of the caution necessary in determining the
original purpose of the makers of an ancient excavation in the chalk,
the following matter occurs to me. In the case of excavations made for
some domestic purpose, the fact that their purpose was domestic may be
decisively established, in certain rocks, by the presence of a stone-wall
lining. I visited the Isle of Portland last March for the purpose of
seeing some beehive-shaped pits in the Purbeck Beds, which were thus
lined, and which were, in all probability, ancient granaries. Now
similar pits in the Chalk would have had no lining whatever, the special