Of the writers who dealt with it at all before 1884 the writer of Murray's Guide, using for basis Mr. Roach Smith's _Collectanea Antiqua_, Vol. VI, gives perhaps as clear an account as any other; and it is quoted for purposes of criticism. "Excavations called _Dane-pits_ are numerous in the chalk near East Tilbury. A passage is said to have led from these caverns to others resembling them at Chadwell near Little Thurrock." (Note in passing that no passage could possibly have led to these pits as a whole, because each group is entirely separate and distinct, except where the ancient divisions have been broken through by explorers.) "The entrances are from above, by narrow circular passages, which widen below and communicate with numerous apartments, all of regular forms." (Our passages, or shafts, are wide at the top, narrow as soon as they reach the Thanet sand, an important factor which "Murray" does not seem to have observed, and never grow any wider while they remain shafts.) "The size and depth vary. It is uncertain for what purpose these pits (which occur in various localities throughout the chalk districts on either side of the Thames) were originally excavated, although it is now generally believed that they were made for the sake of the chalk itself which was largely exported at an early period." Let us dispose of this hypothesis at once. It is impossible. Chalk wells, of course, have been known since the time of Pliny, who explains in his _Natural History_ (XVII 8) that the fine white chalk used by silversmiths is won out of "pits sunk like wells, with narrow mouths, to a depth of 100 ft. where they branch out like the veins of mines." He adds "_Hoc maxime Britannia utitur_" (Murray). That may have been, and it still is, the custom, because the deep-lying chalk is found to be closer and finer in texture. But the value of the depth of a chalk well is that it reaches the deep-lying chalk, whereas in Hangman's Wood the shaft ceases and the excavated chambers begin practically so soon as the chalk has been penetrated far enough to leave room for the chambers under an adequate roof. What our unknown ancestors dug out here was surface chalk, not deep-lying chalk at all, and if surface chalk was good enough to export there was plenty of it available without being at the pains to dig through a mass of gravel and Thanet sand. No unprejudiced man, and I was assuredly such a one when I descended into these holes, can possibly explore the excavations in Hangman's Wood and go away capable of believing that they were originally chalk wells. Apart from the question of quality of chalk, the neatness of the chambers, their precise symmetry, and above all the fact that they were a distinct and separate group belonging to each shaft, although the partitions, when broken through by explorers were often only a foot or two thick, disposes of the theory absolutely.