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Deneholes

 

[Here’s a link to other forays around my map.]



Today I disappeared down a hole I did not want to go down…

For here’s the thing about my project of exploring a single map in detail: every grid square in Britain has, over millennia, been forest and farmland and managed by man in some way. Nothing is wild, nothing is untouched. The plus side of that is that no place comes without layers and layers of history and stories. No grid square has not been walked by somebody who left their trace, someone whose story I would love to know.

What is the problem of this? Well if I begin to dive into the history of my grid squares, if I don’t just restrict myself to my own amateur, cursory, bimbling gaze, then I risk opening one of those crazy Russian dolls. For in every grid square lie Romans and Victorians, Mediaeval farming practices, Neolithic burial beliefs, never mind the birds and beetles and berries (read David Haskell’s fine book about finding Biology Zen in a tiny patch of nature). This is before I even get onto all the tangential ideas that each of these places bring to my mind; memories of other places, plans for future journeys, books I have read or want to write.

In other words, my single map is in danger of unfolding for me into a lifetime of work and wonder, like Alice’s rabbit hole.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

All of this is a long way of saying that I thought I had explored my grid square thoroughly, until I came home, Googled the meaning of the Earthwork boundary around the wood, and learned that my wood was actually full of ‘deneholes’.

So now I had to Google ‘deneholes’, and that made me realise that I needed to return to this square for a second time, that I had not done it justice at all, and that this time I needed to be armed with a climbing rope and a head torch…

I texted a friend with my what3words location in case I did not reappear, then leaned back into learning something new. A denehole is an underground structure consisting of a number of small chalk caves entered by a vertical shaft. The chalk uplands of this area once contained many hundreds, if not thousands, of deneholes of various types. Many theories were put forward to explain why these structures were excavated, varying from Druids’ temples, flint mines and ancient hiding places to elaborate animal traps. Subsequent investigation and research confirms that deneholes are no more than small chalk mines. The vast majority were sunk to obtain an unpolluted supply of chalk to spread on the surrounding fields as a fertiliser. The method had much to recommend it as a small shaft at the edge of a field would not interfere with farming operations and could easily be blocked when mining ceased. In 1225 Henry III gave every man the right to sink a marl pit on his own land. Spreading chalk on the fields was a common practice in the Middle Ages. Pliny the Elder wrote about British chalk extraction in A.D. 70 and archaeological evidence shows that at least some of the deneholes were being exploited during prehistory. Casts taken of some of the pick-holes near the roof show that, in all probability, they were made by bone or horn picks.

Originally this 800-year-old denehole would have been accessed by a 20 foot vertical shaft. This hole has been covered by a grate. But one of the denehole’s six domed chambers has collapsed, meaning that I could slither down through a hole in its roof. I am really claustrophic and squeezing through the narrow gap gave me more pause for concern than I had anticipated finding in this small suburban wood. Thankfully it quickly opened out into the high chambers that had been carved out for their chalk all those centuries ago. It was an astonishing feeling to stand in pitch darkness surrounded by such history. Rain pattered into the entrance tunnel, and I could still just hear the sound of traffic. But I felt very far from the world and was certainly glad that my friend was awaiting a text message to confirm that I got out OK.

I shone my head torch around. The excavations were considerably larger than I had imagined. It must have been a ferocious amount of work to carve the chalk from the six domed chambers, each measuring about 8ftx12ft and the ceiling arched 15ft above me. The walls were etched with graffiti from visitors across the years, and the plastic bottles strewn around testified to more recent explorers. Quite how the cow’s skull I found got there I preferred not to know.

Huffing and puffing, I wriggled back up through the tunnel into the 21st Century. I was buzzing to have discovered the denehole. It was one of the most interesting things I have seen in Britain, close to where I live, and yet I’d never even heard of such a thing before. What other surprises wait for me on my little 20km² map?

I cycled for 30 minutes to reach this grid square. I had a mental checklist in my head as I rode, “turn left down the track into the wood. I’ll know I’m in my square when the powerlines intersects the path.” There is a satisfying pleasure and usefulness in being able to interpret OS maps and transpose the lines and symbols into an idea of what the land that awaits will be like.

I’ve never entered the woods from this direction before, only exited them. So I have never seen the numerous rusty signs, shotgun-pocked and hammered to trees: ‘NO TRESPASSING’, ‘DANGER SHOOTING… including using a SILENCED RIFLE’. I don’t know whether they really are private or if the hunters just want to keep people away.

I do know that there are plenty of official footpaths in the woods, that it is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), that there are dozens of trails made by dirt bikers, that there is a clay pigeon shooting site, and that the tarmac road entering the woods feels much more like a council road than a private driveway. I have run or cycled this track many times before. I’ve never seen anyone in these woods. There are no homes or businesses here. I have not done an iota of harm, nor caused anyone a moment’s inconvenience or distress. And yet, perhaps, I am trespassing, and I don’t like how that makes me feel.

I don’t want confrontation. I don’t want to do anything wrong. But I do want to wander in these lovely, empty woods. And I do object to the majority of England’s countryside being held off-limits by a tiny number of rich people, handing down their wealth, entitlement, and land through the generations. Perhaps these thoughts bubble because I recently read the beautifully-illustrated “Book of Trespass” which opens with an account of the celebrated mass trespass of Kinder Scout in the Peak District in 1932. The book’s tone didn’t always sit comfortably with me. But from years of bivvy bag adventures I acknowledge that I’m a regular trespasser. (Here are my tips on that.) Know your rights, the book shouts. The French word trespasser, “to cross over”, derives from the Latin transgredior, from which, tellingly, comes the English transgression. But a sign that reads “Trespassers will be prosecuted” is either mistaken or mendacious – you will not be prosecuted for your transgression alone. In 1994, however, the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act introduced the crime of “aggravated trespass”, under the terms of which any “additional conduct” while trespassing constitutes a crime. As the Crown Prosecution Service website states: “There is no requirement that the additional conduct should itself be a crime.” It may include “playing a musical instrument or taking a photograph” – or drawing in a sketchbook. 

Regardless, I continue up the tarmacced path. I pull down my hoody so that I don’t look like a “hoody”. And I know that if anyone does challenge me I’ll be able to smile, chat and bumble my way out of any problems. I know too that this would be more difficult and daunting if I was black or a woman. In that sense, the outdoors are not equally accessible to all.

I shrug off these gloomy thoughts, for today is a beautiful morning. I headed straight out after waking up so I still feel morning fuzzy and soft. I sit on a pleasingly-not-damp log to settle in to the woodland and sip my coffee. The hollow is covered with crisp, brown leaves, and the few coloured leaves that still linger on the branches have a dazzling backdrop of blue sky. This will probably be the last of the late days of glorious autumn colour. That makes it more precious. There will be no more golden days such as this for another year. The ground switches between carpets of brown beech leaves, to oak, to sweet chestnut, then bright patches of yellow maple and green moss. Even the genius of artist Andy Goldsworthy cannot compete. He is a naturalist, meaning that all of his art is derived from or related to nature and is inspired by all aspects of the natural world, including snowflakes, twigs, icicles, reeds, tree roots, and rocks.

He has said that his goal is to understand nature by becoming a part of it, and he considers his creations to be transient or ephemeral because they, like any other part of nature, are destined to change over time: “movement, change, light, growth, and decay” are the lifeblood of nature.

With each small gust of breeze I hear the rattling of dry falling leaves, like screwing up newspaper for a fire. Oddly, the steady roar of the dual carriageway a couple of hundred metres away accentuates the peace. I am lucky to be here this morning.

I hope in this project to pay more attention to everyday things, to remember to be more astonished. There are a lot of things that I know, or sort of know, but just take for granted. For example, I know that leaves are green because chlorophyll, which absorbs sunlight for it to be converted into food, is green. Goodness, that whole process is astonishing. But I restrain my thinking today to the colours of autumn which begin once the shortening days of sunlight nudge the trees to produce less chlorophyll and hunker down for winter. Left behind are the yellow and orange pigments in the leaves, called caretonoids.

When leaves change colour, another pigment becomes visible: flavonoids, which are responsible for the reds. These colours are particular to autumn because their pigment is created only when the temperature drops.

Autumn is often some combination of bright sunlight but cooler air, and it’s under these conditions that amber, red, and magenta hues in leaves can be produced. Consequently, autumns with a lot of sunny days and cold nights will actually have the brightest red colours. The intensity of the leaves will vary based on moisture and temperature, and sudden frost can stunt more brilliant colours from being revealed.

When leaves start to prepare to fall off the trees come winter, a layer of cells form along the base of its stalk. This formation effectively seals off the movement of sugar from leaf to tree, and when that leaf is blown off, it leaves behind a leaf scar. The remaining sugars are stored in the tree.

I’m sharing my log (but not my coffee) with a gloriously weird, slimy, beautiful fungus. A ‘Wrinkled Peach’, I learn from my Seek app. It likes to grow on dead and rotting elm so after the Dutch elm disease outbreak they became quite common. Now it is fairly rare although it will grow on other hardwoods. I vaguely remember Dutch elm disease from my childhood. This now infamous tree disease has killed millions of elm trees in the UK over the last 40 years. It’s changed parts of our landscape forever and it’s still spreading north. It is mirrored more recently with Ash dieback, a devastating tree disease that has the potential to kill up to 95% of ash trees across the UK. At an estimated cost of billions, the effects will be staggering. It will change the UK landscape forever and threaten many species which rely on ash. This makes me really sad! (If you believe that you have identified Ash Dieback in ash trees, please report it immediately to the appropriate authority DEFRA.)

I put away my notebook and spend a happy half hour trying to take a photograph of a gnarled oak tree in a patch of bracken. I hope that this oak might be home to two nationally rare beetles (the shimmering two-spotted oak buprestid, since you ask). They are fond of dead oak timber and account for this wood being a Site of Special Scientific Interest. I’m trying to get the lens flare right, that dazzling effect of light rays you can conjure if you use a wide angle lens and a small aperture. My friend Martin taught me how to do it in Greenland, so I text him to say thanks. He replies to say, “Don’t be shy of letting more detail disappear into the light and this time of year when the air is cold you should set the white balance to the ‘shade’ warming temperature. Remember light in the shadows is cooler than light in the sunshine .. but it makes everything look inviting!”

Most of the photographs I take in this grid square are not of quaint autumn trees, but are of burned-out cars or the detritus of hunting and clay-pigeon shooting. There seem to be more burned-out cars than birds in this wood! This is another thing I know nothing about: nicking cars, ragging around with your mates, bumping and bashing through a wood conveniently close to the main road out of London, drinking cider, and then setting it on fire to destroy all the evidence. Stupid, thoughtless, criminal, dangerous, messy. But I have to admit it also intrigues me and sounds exciting and fun! I settle for practising my lens flare photos and climbing onto one of the cars for a photo. That’s how I get my thrills these days…

I hide my bike, lock it, and step away from the path and away from the scrunched-up cider cans peppered with bullet holes. I push through brambles into an area of woodland that feels ignored, untouched, scraggly, wild, and huge. It is a small re-entrant with fallen, moss-covered oaks and stringy, black-tipped ash saplings racing for the sky, for the light. It is a literal race of life or death, for only one or two will win and survive. Like the green stagnant pond from Day 1, I really liked the hidden, unkempt, unloved timeless atmosphere of this natural clearing. I like being along where nobody knows I am here. But it saddens me that a mere square kilometre of wood feels wild and expansive to me. What a denuded demonstration of the shifting baseline syndrome! Imagine walking through Britain’s proper forests before they were all cut down…

It feels timeless to me, but no tree here is more than a couple of hundred years old. Once upon a time there was a Roman road and settlement down the hill. And this wood has been owned and managed for centuries. It is surrounded by an embankment which looks freshly-dug, but was originally a Medieval construct. The wood has been managed as coppice-with-standards (scattered trees, typically oak, are allowed to grow to their full height (standards) for use as structural timber, while the understorey is coppiced), and it is this traditional management that has given rise to the broad-leaved woodland and glades that we see today.

Woodland has been managed since at least the fourth millennium BC in order to produce timber and smaller wood for fencing, wattlework and fuel, including charcoal. However, it is only for more recent periods that evidence for woodland management survives in the woods themselves, generally in the form of wood boundaries and features relating to woodland crafts. Woods which are more than 100 years old often have some form of earthwork boundary: ancient wood boundaries (pre AD 1700) are either sinuous or zig- zagged; straight edged woods with slighter earthworks usually indicate a wood boundary of later than AD 1700. Such boundary earthworks are usually in the form of a wood bank with an outer ditch. This was traditionally set with a hedge (to keep out livestock) and pollarded trees (to define the legal boundary). The total width of the earthwork is usually between 6m and 12m. 

The easy availability of wood-based fuel often resulted in fuel-hungry industries such as ironworks, limekilns, potteries, tileries and brickworks being sited within woods. Quarries are often also located in woodland in order to minimise the loss of more productive agricultural land elsewhere (now strewn with clay-pigeon shells). By the end of the 19th century coppicing had fallen into decline with the loss of its ancient markets, especially after the widespread introduction of coal for household use and manufacturing. Since 1945 there has been a dramatic increase in the destruction of old woodlands due to increased competition for land. 

Although sections have been partly destroyed by modern road building, the medieval woodland boundary in this wood survives well. Its earthworks are comparatively large for this type of monument, and have been positively dated by part excavation to the period AD 1200- 1250.

And whilst I didn’t like seeing the rubbish from clay-pigeon shooting strewn across the old quarry, I could at least feel reassured that this is not a new symptom of our age. Dating back to 1769 here were three brick kilns. The entire ground over this area is deeply scarred with pits, mounds and scarping, indicating intense digging and industrial activity during the period of productivity. There is a worked-out clay pit that had ultimately been used as a tipping dump for kiln wasters of spoilt bricks and tiles. It may be that there are still a few of these particular branded tiles to be found roofing some of the old houses in and around the district.

From the evidence available it may be postulated that the brickworks commenced brick and tile manufacture in the latter part of the seventeenth century, ceasing work at the close of the eighteenth century. It seems likely that the clay beds became exhausted, and so caused the works to close down.

Everywhere I walk I am treading on history, and on the cyclical nature of man marking the landscape, exhausting it, and nature eventually reclaiming and rewilding it. Thinking about this made me much more hopeful for our landscape and world.

The wood covered only around half of my square, so after having a good look around (though not good enough, it turned out, to discover the deneholes), I rode out of the wood, over a raucously noisy and fast road and into a new housing estate. The cul de sacs varied from semi-detached commuter bolt holes (the streets filled with parking permit signs to keep out other commuters looking for a cheap alternative to the train station carpark, back in the days when people actually used to take a train to work every day) to fancy detached homes, brick-built but fronted with flint and ostentatious columns framing the front doors. A couple of hundred metres from the trim homes was a big scrapyard, surrounded by caravans and trailer homes. I peeked in at the scrapyard and it looked so photogenic and intriguing. But I felt nervous taking my camera out so retraced my steps.

There was a semi-rural feel to the suburban homes, thanks to the horses from a disabled riding centre mooching about in a couple of paddocks. Riding for the Disabled provides therapy, fitness, skills development and opportunities for achievement – all supported by 18,000 amazing volunteers and qualified coaches at nearly 500 RDA centres all over the UK. Riding for the disabled provides therapy, fitness, skills development and opportunities for achievement – all supported by 18,000 amazing volunteers and qualified coaches at nearly 500 RDA centres all over the UK.

I walked down a path to a park, noticing a rusty badge saying, “Sorry, I need to lip-read. Please be patient.” Exploring these grid-squares is exhausting: there is so.much.to.see. All.of.the.time. I need to zone out for a bit. I sit on a park bench (‘In loving memory of Arthur Harris and Dorothy Harris, and their dog Smirnoff’) for a few minutes and then I’m good to go again. From here I can see for miles across low farmland. All this, as far as the eye can see, is waiting for me to explore on my single map. It certainly no longer feels like a claustrophobic, restraining map.

I keep being drawn to go beyond the border of my map, like Kipling’s Explorer, for whom a voice whispered,
“Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges –
“Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!”.

I know that I shouldn’t be greedy, that I should wait until the time comes for me to investigate the next square. It will be satisfying to gradually put the pieces together on my jigsaw. I know that. But still… Sitting on Arthur and Dorothy’s bench, atop a mighty 60m hill, looking down towards motorway junctions and flyovers, I just want to keep going!

But from here I can also see a dark black rain front moving my way. That’s me done. What lies beyond the ranges will have to wait for another day for me to discover.

Read Comments

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Comments

  1. dexey Posted

    Lovely report, Alastair.
    Are you on Dartford Heath? I used to cycle there from Welling as a boy and there were what we called the glory holes that were very like what you climbed down.
    There was also a nudist camp nearby but no rusty cars.

    Reply
  2. I love this post. Really like the level of detail you go into in these posts. And also the variety of observations. Thoroughly interesting and I can wait for the next one in the series.

    Reply
  3. Paul Posted

    Great article. I love the way you don’t give away the location. However in I work for the power company and as soon as spot a pylon try and work out where you are. So that’s my challenge for tomorrow. If you like !!!! going down holes take a look for zero stations in Kent

    Reply
    • Alastair Posted

      Are you able to work out locations from pylons?! (Adds to list of random things I need to learn on this project….)

      Reply
  4. Jon Posted

    Fascinating article. Just shows what you can find even in places that you think you know, or have dismissed – if you have the eyes to see.

    Just one point though: don’t cramp your style – 20 km x 20 km is 400 sq km – more to explore 😉

    Reply

 
 

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