Mining Method
In order to remove the chalk efficiently, the ancient miners built wooden platforms and ladders as they dug downwards and piled the spoil around the shaft opening using turf revetments to hold it in place for the season, when the shaft and all its galleries were thoroughly and fastidiously backfilled to promote stability. The landscape around Grime's Graves has a characteristic pockmarked appearance caused by the infilled shafts. This is probably what inspired the later Anglo-Saxon inhabitants of the area to name it after their god Grim (literally the masked, or hooded one, a euphemism for Woden). Although the pagan Anglo-Saxons seem to have had some idea of what the site was, as the name of the site means literally 'The masked one's quarries,' (or Grim's Graben,) it wasn't until Canon William Greenwell excavated one of the shafts from 1868- 1870 that their purpose was discovered in modern times. Other similar sites have been found in chalk or downland areas, such as at Cissbury and Spiennes in Belgium.
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