Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 29.djvu/45

Rh well above is very rugged, as though sunk by unskilled workmen—perhaps convicts—and is stained, as though used as a cesspool. Also, for many yards around, the rubbish, elsewhere of pure white, is dark and foul, as though, failing to reach wwater, or afterwards disused for that purpose, the well had been employed as a receptacle for all the filth of the prison.

As to the age of these quarries, it is not easy to form a sound opinion. They have been supposed to be British, and various uses have been found for them, quite at variance with the appearances they present. The only argument for such an origin has been overlooked. The town is in Woking hundred, and Woking, like Wokey in Mendip, may be a corruption of the British "Ogof" (fovea), a cave. But Woking was never the name of the town, and the material evidence of the caverns does not favour this theory. They are certainly not British: the plan of the workings excludes this view. No doubt they might be Roman, but there are no traces of Roman buildings in the neighbourhood, and chalk, even hard chalk, is too plentiful all along the ridge to be carried hence to any great distance. The most probable supposition seems to me to be that they were opened by the builders of the Norman Castle, who used chalk largely for their inner, and, indeed, for much of their more exposed, work. The quarries have no communication with any part of the castle. Where they infringe upon its borders they are far too deep to have been employed against it during a mediæval siege.