Page:Cliff Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe.djvu/111

 by explorers, its present depth is no more than 43 feet. Further progress is made, and presently we notice a streak of daylight some distance ahead; here we find that we have reached the foot of a shaft 85 feet deep, which, though now partly covered in, had its mouth in what is at the present time the garden of a modern villa."

There are numerous other Dene Holes or Danes' Pits at East Tilbury, Crayford, and Little Thurrock. As to the theory that they were places of Druidical worship, we may dismiss it as not deserving serious consideration.

At East Tilbury the entrance to the Danes' pit is from above, by narrow passages that widen and communicate with several apartments, all of regular forms. One of these pits consists of a shaft descending to chambers arranged like a sixfoiled flower. The shaft is 3 feet in diameter and 85 feet deep. This may be likened to one at Doué-la-Fontaine (Maine et Loire), where a descent is made under a private house into an area from which radiate on all sides chambers, some of which contain tombs.

That these Dene Holes were used as hiding-places when the sails of the Danish Vikings appeared on the horizon is probable enough, but originally they were chalk quarries—some very ancient—for British coins have been found in them. The existence of old lime-kilns near the Chislehurst caves places their origin beyond a doubt. Chalk was largely exported in early times from the Thames to Zealand, whence it was passed through the Low Countries and used in dressing the fields. Altars to Nethalennia, the patroness of the chalk quarries, have been found in the sand on the coast of Zealand; some bear votive inscriptions from dealers in British chalk, and Pliny, writing of the finer quality of chalk (argentaria) employed by silversmiths, obtained from pits sunk like wells, with narrow mouths, to the depth of a hundred feet, whence they branch