those in sand, gravel or loam have perished. For the latter, which would usually need strengthening by means of timber and other supports, make their sites known, in almost every case, when their sudden collapse has caused a subsidence at the surface. This connexion of well-preserved deneholes with the chalk has tended to the identification of deneholes with pits in chalk, if not for chalk. And the fact that in certain localities, where chalk is near the surface, it has sometimes been sought (by those requiring it for lime, or for manuring clay land) by means of shallow pits with vertical shafts, has caused a confusion between deneholes and 'chalk-wells.' Of course, whether a particular pit in the chalk is a chalk-well or a denehole — in other words whether it was made for the sake of the material extracted, or to obtain an excavation for a secret storehouse or other domestic purpose — is a question to be decided upon the evidence afforded in each particular case.
Pits of both kinds have been noted by ancient writers as existing in Britain. Pliny [1] speaks of chalk-wells in describing the extraction of chalk 'by means of pits sunk like wells with narrow mouths, to the depth, sometimes, of one hundred feet, where they branch out like the veins of mines; and this kind is chiefly used in Britain.[2] On the other hand, Diodorus Siculus states that the people of Britain had mean habitations, made for the most part of rushes and sticks, and that their harvest consisted in cutting off the ears of corn and storing them in pits underground, some of the corn which had been longest stored being taken out each day for food.
To illustrate the fact that pits traditionally called deneholes have no necessary connexion with the chalk, it may be well to note here that at Billericay, Essex (where the top of the chalk must be at least 500 ft. below the surface) it is recorded[3] that a young labourer's father informed Mr. J. E. K. Cutts, in 1871, that an 'excavation like a gravel pit' was a 'denehole which had caved in.' It is also stated on the same page that a series of deneholes in Mucking Woods 'was filled up within the last few years, and these were in sand.' Turning to Kent, we learn from Hasted[4] that deneholes were once numerous on Dartford Heath, and that some there were in the sand: 'About a mile south-westward from the town is Dartford Heath, where there are a great many of those pits and holes, so frequent in these parts. Some of these reach as low as the chalk, others no farther than the sand ; many of them have been stopped up of late years, to prevent the frequent accidents which happen of men and cattle falling into them.'
The existence of deneholes at Tilbury on the Essex side of the Thames, and of some at or near Crayford, Faversham and some other Kentish localities is noted by Camden. Hasted, in his History of Kent, mentions some in the Isle of Thanet and elsewhere. But the fullest list of places in Kent is that given by Mr. F. C. J. Spurrell in his paper on ' Deneholes, and Artificial Caves with Vertical Entrances.'[5] This paper was read before the Archaeological Institute in April, 1881, and is the earliest in which deneholes and pits, ancient and modern, more or less resembling them, as regards the purposes of their constructors, are fully treated in a scientific spirit. Mr. Spurrell gives, as denehole localities, Blackheath, Kidbrooke, Charlton, Eltham, Bexley, Crayford, Greenhithe, Swanscombe, Cobham, Rochester, the land between Greenstreet and Teynham Railway Station, and the country around Sittingbourne. He also mentions Halstead, Knockholt and Cudham. To these may be added the Chalk Downs near Lenham, and Lydden and Alkham near Dover, also Darenth and Stone.
In many of the above localities, however, those wishing to see and examine deneholes for themselves would find no examples sufficiently well preserved to be inspected, though here and there their sites might be pointed out, or traditions of their former existence be obtained. For where they are scattered singly they are usually discovered at the present day through the sudden appearance of a subsidence at the surface, which marks the site of an imperfectly filled-up shaft. This is especially likely to be the case where the land is above the average in fertility or where the population living on it has greatly increased. But where the land is poor and population scanty, or where deneholes are collected in numbers so large as to make any attempt to use the land they occupy for agricultural purposes ridiculous, there they may be found preserved from all destructive influences but those of the weather operating during centuries of disuse.
In giving some description of a few examples of the deneholes of Kent, it seems best to begin with those which are wholly, or almost wholly, in the chalk, as they are, in the main,447
