Secret Chambers and Hiding Places

s an inn immediately opposite this house, just outside the close, where the landlord (formerly a servant to the family who lived in the mansion) during the troublous ti

ANEL AT

ive years ago. By the merest accident one of the panels was found to open, revealing what appeared to be an ordinary cupboard with shelves. Further investigations, however, proved its real object. By sliding one of the shelves out of the grooves into which it is fixed, a very narrow, disguised door, a little over a foot in width, in the side of the cupboard and in the thickness of the wall can be

velvet pillow; the last two articles, provided no doubt for the comfort of some hunted cavalier, upon being handled, fell to pieces. It m

ouse Lord Wilmot, Colonel Phelips, and other of the King's friends who were actively engaged in making preparations for the memorable journey. This old inn, with its

R, CHASTLETON

EWING CARVING IN WHICH IS A PEE

and had just time to conceal himself ere his pursuers arrived, who, finding his horse saddled, concluded that the rider could not be far off. They therefore searched the house minutely for fou

in Arthur Jones, who, narrowly escaping from the battlefield, speeded homewards with some of Cromwell's soldiers at his heels; a

ting them over the mansion. Here, as in so many other instances, the secret room was entered from the principal bedroom, and in inspecting

ose-its victims dropped off one by one, until the whole party lay like logs upon the floor. Mrs. Arthur Jones then crept in, having even to step over the bodies of the inani

very, comfortable little dressing-room, preserving its original oak panelling, and otherwis

garden, possesses a charm which few other ancient mansions can boast, and this charm lies in its perfectly unaltered state throughout, even to the minutest detail. Interior and exterior alike, everything presents an appearance exact

all of the latter house. Other relics of the martyr-king used to be at Little Compton-viz. some beams of the Whitehall scaffold, whose exact position has occasioned so much controversy. The velvet armchair and footstool used by the King during his memorable trial

STL

DOOR, C

not far from Hurstpierpoint. We mention this from the fact that a priest's hole was discovered there some few years ago. It was found in

here. A hiding-place is said to have existed in the wide open fireplace of the great hall. Tradition has it that a horseman, hard pressed b

uns, at the beautiful old black-and-white timber mansion, Park Hall, near Oswestry. A certain "false floor" which led to it

Fenwicks, Wallington, in Northumberland-a small room eight feet long by sixteen feet high, sit

l is a hiding-place, and in a bedroom of the same house there is a little apartment, now converted i

to pass through a trap-door in the attics, crawl along under the roof, and drop down into the, s

HALL, ST

S HOSPITA

aled hidden recesses and screened passages leading up to an exit in the leads of the roof. In one of these recesses curious s

place and situated in the wall between the dining-room and the great hall; over its entrance

rather affords a means of looking down into the hall.[1] We mention this portrait more especially because it has been supposed that Scott got his idea here of the ghostly picture which figures in Woodstock. A bona-fide hiding

be pushed aside, giving a view into the great hall, and at Oc

of the labyrinth leading to the "bower" existed in Drayton's time, who described them as "vaults, arched and walled with stone and brick, almost inextricably wound within one another, by which,

E, BROUG

and circuit both of the place and ruins show it to have been a house of one pile, and probably was filled with secret p

he middle of the eighteenth century the mansion passed out of the hands of its old possessors, the Stewkeleys, and shortly afterwards became notorious for the unaccountable noises which disturbed the peace of mind of the new tenants. Not only were there violent knocks, hammerings, groanings, and sounds of footsteps in the ceilings and walls, out strange sights frightened the servants out of their wits. A ghostly visitant dressed in drab would appear and disappear mysteriously, a female figure was often seen to rush throug

natural occurrences at Hinton-Ampner wil

iding-places we shall speak presently. It is with the head of the bed we have now to do, as it was sometimes used as an opening into the wall at the back. Occasionally, in old houses, unmeaning gaps and spaces are met with in the upper rooms midway between floor and ceiling, which possibly at one tim

iron chest in the little room between her bed's-head and the back stairs." This old seat of the Verneys had another secret chamber in the middle storey, entered through a t

e Memoirs of th

COURT, O

CASTLE,

moated mansion the secret stairs may yet be seen that led up to the little isolated chamber, with massive casemated walls for the exclusion of sound. Anthony Wood, alluding to the secret councils, says: "Several years before the Civil War began, Lord Saye, being looked upon as the godfath

: Memorials

y of Northamptonshire, had a secret room over the hall, where a private press was kept for the purpos

ucks, but eventually gave himself up. The hiding-hole at Dinton was beneath the staircase, and accessible by removing three of the steps. A nar

that it was a servant of Mayne who

President was a member), has or had a concealed chamber high up in the wall of a room on the ground floo

, BRADSHAWE H

es from the town of New Haven, Conn., afforded them sanctuary. For some days they were concealed in an old house belonging to a certain Mrs. Eyers, in a secret chamb

Stiles's Ju

discovered concealed in a hiding-place constructed in a chimney at the back of a tall cupboard, and the chances are that he would not have been arrested had it not been evident, by the warmth of his bed and his clothes scattered about, that he had only just r

See Roger Nor

arly in the counties of Cheshire and Lancashire, where the Duke of Monmouth

Hall MSS., Hist. MSS.

particular time on account of its hiding facilities. An anonymous letter sent to the Secretary of State failed not to point out "that vastness and intricacy that without a most diligent search it's impossible to discover all the lurking holes in it, there being severall trap dores on the leads and in closetts

: Vide King

COURT,

, BEDFORDSHIRE, IN 180

tion she was condemned to be burned alive by Judge Jeffreys-a sentence commuted afterwards to beheading. It is difficult to associate this peaceful old Jacobean mansion, and the simple tomb in the churchyard hard by, with so terrible a history. A dark hole in

Monmouth, his boon companion and supporter, John, third Lord Lovelace, organised treasonable meetings in this tomb-like chamber. Tradition asserts that certain important documents in favour of the Revolution