Page:VCH Kent 1.djvu/543

 ANCIENT EARTHWORKS to deepen the pit. This had resulted in the leaving of ' benches ' towards the end of each chamber. The ' passages ' of the plan (iig. 3) appeared to be of later date than the rest of the excavations. The second pit of this group (fig. 4) was also somewhat obscured by the non-completion of a process of deepening similar to that which had been in progress in the first. The depth of the shaft was about 30 ft. Proceeding to Alkham, we found ' Moseling's Hole ' near the top of a hiUside, 400 ft. above the sea, half a mile south-east of Alkham church, where the height of the surface is about 225 ft. This pit was rather more than 50 ft. deep, and extremely simple in shape (fig. 5). A leading feature was the great height, about 30 ft., and very slight length of the three chambers diverging from the shaft. In this case the deepening was evidently com- pleted while the pit was still in use, and must have been in progress since it began to be used. It is evident that these Lydden and Alkham pits resemble those of Lenham in general character and in position. They are alike in being at some little distance from the centres of habitation, and in being grouped in twos and threes. Now there is nothing in the localities in which they are found to suggest a special demand for chalk there, in ancient times, for lime or for the manuring of clay land. Nor is there anything in the shape and position of these Fig. 3. Fig. 3a. No. I Denehole at Stonehall Farm, Lydden. pits to make them a means by which such a demand — did it exist — could be profitably sup- plied. They are neither well formed nor well placed for such purposes. On the other hand, their close grouping in twos and threes in out-of-the-way spots (though unintelligible on the chalk-well hypothesis) is precisely what might be expected if they were once secret family storehouses. Leaving the wilder parts of Kent we come to Bexley, where unquestionable deneholes are not only more numerous than elsewhere, but where they may best be examined. For, as already mentioned, pits scattered singly here and there have generally been more or less fiUed up to prevent accidents, if they have not collapsed, or been choked up, through the in- fluence of the weather during centuries of disuse. But groups of some forty or fifty deneholes concentrated as closely as the separation of each pit from its neighbours allows (like those of Stankey and Cavey Spring, Bexley), have a much better chance of survival, for the small compact area they occupy has obviously been rendered unfit by them for every other purpose, and can only be fenced in and let alone. Deneholes are scattered around Bexley, as about Crayford and Dartford, but at Stankey Wood, a few yards west of the mansion known as Baldwyns, close to the south-western corner of Dartford Heath, there is a group of some forty or fifty ; while another of similar size, equally I 449 57