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Archaeologia Cantiana -  Vol. 1  1858  page 141

Discovery of fragments of Ancient British, Romano-British, and Roman Pottery, 
found in a Chalk Cavern in Camden Park, Chislehurst.
  By Robert Booth Latter Esq

Similar excavations have been discovered in various parts of Gaul and Britain. Caesar ordered the caves into which the Aquitanian Gauls had retreated to be closed up. Those mentioned by Camden, discovered near Tilbury and near Faversham, may, upon further examination of the orifice of this pit, be identical in form, narrow towards the top, and broad in expanding circle below, contracting towards the base.
   The sinkers of the pit probably had in view the extraction of  "marl" for agricultural purposes, referred to by Pliny:—"The Britons used to sink pits one hundred feet in depth, narrow at the mouth, but within of great compass." And Tacitus refers to these pits as storehouses for corn, and places of refuge from the enemy. The opening towards the top, as has been stated, has not yet been touched, but if on examination it shall be found that the steining has been dislodged, it may be inferred that the tool-cut blocks of chalk, and large flints found among the bones, were those which had originally formed the steining of the shaft or approach from above; and if so, the bones of the animals (ruminants of the woods and fields, animals of prey and of the chase) found  below as well as above the fallen steining, have belonged to pit-fallen animals; whilst the watershed falling down the extensive range of loamy sloping hills, may have carried in its course any fragments of bone or pottery, landshells or other light substances, into the opening thus formed, especially as there is reason to suppose that the surface around has been covered with wood and wild vegetation to such an extent as to allow of no forewarning of danger.
   The "swallow" near Camden Park appears to have been a boundary-mark in A.D. 862, mentioned in a Saxon Charter of AEthelberht, King of Wessex, to Dryghtwald his minister, granting ten carucates of land in Bromleag, —"?anne fram Swelgende, Cregsetna haga, to sioxhiltre,"

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