File:Tilbury Daneholes.gif

English: Deneholes near Tilbury, Essex, England, UK, in the illustration from the 1610 English translation of Camden's Britannia. "Near Tilbury are several spacious caverns in a chalky cliff, built very artificially of stone to the height of ten fathoms, and somewhat straight at the top." Gough's notes on Camden claimed "The caverns placed by Mr. Camden in Tilbury, are, in fact, in Chadwell parish. Dr. Derham [Rector of Upminster] measured three... and in East Tilbury, in a field called Cave field, is a horizontal passage to the cavern. These have been supposed granaries of the ancient Britons, retreats of the Danish ravagers, and even King Cunobeline's gold mines." Derham's letter of 17 February 1706 states "I myself measured three of the most considerable holes, and found one of them fifty foot six inches deep; another, seventy foot seven inches; another, in the wood northward, eighty foot; the depth of the western hole, near the road, fifty-five foot six inches; on the same side the road is another seventy foot seven inches; on the other side of the way, in Hangman's-wood, is another hole of eighty foot four inches. A cow fell into the hole fifty-five foot six inches, not killed nor much hurt, drawn up by a carpenter who went down and put ropes about her. The bottom is soft sand, on which the cow alighted and was saved. Over the midst of the hole is an arch of two hundred feet of chalk. The holes lie near the highway, within the compass of six acres of ground, leading from Stifford to Chadwell..." (In fact the entire area abounds with deneholes and Gough fails to state evidence that Camden's specific examples were those elsewhere.)