HOUSES WITH SECRET CHAMBERS.
Though we have on former occasions referred to houses with lurking-places, or secret chambers, the subject seems to be of such interest as to warrant our giving some further examples.
Plowden Hall, county of Salop, with ‘its gable ends, high chimneys, its floors, staircases, and doors of solid oak, and walls covered with oak panelling,’ is described as being full of nooks and corners. There is a hiding-hole in the closet of one of the bedrooms, where the boards of the flooring are so arranged as to be easily moved; and underneath is a trap-door, by which a small ladder leads down into a dark hole where there is just room enough for a man to change his position with ease from a standing to a sitting posture. There is a shelf, on which the concealed person could eat his food. Tradition states that a priest was actually concealed there for a fortnight whilst Cromwell’s soldiers were posted outside the gates; and that these were obliged to leave without having discovered him. Besides this hiding-place, there is an escape about the width and form of a chimney, reaching from one of the bedrooms down to the ground-floor of the house, to which a man might be lowered by means of a rope. There is also an outlet over the chapel through two trap-doors on to the roof, where a person might escape between the eaves of the house; and a portion of the flooring of the chapel is so formed as to lift up and cover a hiding-place below for concealing the sacred vessels.
Raglan Castle, Hallam, Derbyshire; Maple-Durham House, Oxon; Oxburgh Hall, Norfolk; Coughton Hall, Warwickshire; Harrowden, the seat of the Lords Vaux; and the old Manor-house, Long Clawson, each has its lurking-holes and secret chamber. That in the last named quaint, old, picturesque-looking house is reached by the chimney of one of the sitting-rooms.
‘White Welles House, which lies on the borders of Enfield Chase, is said to have been’ full of holes, dark mysterious vaults, and subterranean passages.
Recusants and priests found refuge in Little Malvern Court in the days of their persecution, the position of one or two hiding-places in the roof being still pointed out.
A secret chamber in Lowstock Hall, in the parish of Bolton, Lancashire, which was pulled down in 1816, was associated with blood-stains on the hearthstone of one of the rooms, and the supposed murder of a priest in the troublous times.
In connection with Yorkshire, the old Red House is made mention of as having had a secret chamber and gallery underneath the roof. These were brought to light some years ago when workmen were employed in making repairs and alterations on the mansion. The noted royalist, Sir Henry Slingsby, lay for a time concealed in the hiding-place thus skilfully contrived; but venturing forth one moonlight night to enjoy the freedom of a walk in his garden, he was seen by a servant-man, who betrayed him to his enemies; and soon after the gallant old colonel was seized, conveyed to London, and beheaded on Tower Hill.
Kingerby Old Hall, situated in the same county, was also possessed of one or more secret chambers.
Ashbourne Place, in Sussex, which was said to have been built by a brother of Bishop Juxon, was often made use of as a place of refuge by that persecuted prelate after the death of Charles I. At the time when his royal master was beheaded, Juxon was Bishop of London and Clerk of the Closet; and being implicitly trusted by his royal master, to whom he was devotedly attached, he received his last confidences on the scaffold, and his George, with the oft-referred-to word, ‘Remember!’ The father of the present proprietor of Ashbourne, in opening a communication between the back and front chambers, discovered a room, the existence of which was previously unknown, and to which access could only have been gained through the chimney. In all probability, this curious retreat was Bishop Juxon’s hiding-place.
There is a gallery situated in the attic story of the mansion at Stanford Court, in Worcestershire, in which Arthur Salwin—an ancestor of the present proprietor of the estate, who lived in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I.—and his four sons and seven daughters, together with others of their kindred, are portrayed on the oak-panelled walls of the room in the costume of the day; the ladies in embroidered dresses, with jewelled ornaments. Underneath each figure is a motto in Latin. Behind the panels are secret passages, which, previous to the alterations of modern times, extended over a great part of the mansion.
Sanston Hall, the seat of the ancient family of Huddlestone, in Cambridgeshire, was destroyed on account of the owner’s adherence to the ancient faith, and rebuilt in the time of Queen Mary, when the precaution was taken to erect a chapel in the roof. It is approached by a winding staircase, which also gives access to a secret chamber. In the hiding-place near the chapel in the roof at the top of the old winding staircase, there were found some oyster-shells; and a fowl’s bone was picked up in the one belonging to Lydiate Hall—relics of some poor prisoner’s solitary meal.
Upton Court, near Reading, the former residence of the Perkyns family, has also its hidden retreat, which is difficult of access, being approached by a trap-door in the midst of a chimney-stack near the lesser Hall.
About the beginning of the present, or the end of last century, a secret chamber was accidentally discovered in the ancient mansion of Bourton-on-the-Water, a ‘large rambling house of many gables,’ situated in Gloucestershire. The door appeared on tearing off the paper which was about to be removed. It was on the second (or upper) floor landing-place, and opened into a small chamber about eight feet square, containing a chair and a table. On the back of the former lay a black robe; and the whole had the appearance as if some one had recently risen from his seat and left the room. On the same floor there were several other apartments, of which three only were in use, the other (called the Dark Room) having been locked up for many years. Of the three in use, one was styled the Chapel, and another the Priest’s Room. The former had a vaulted roof or ceiling. All three were supposed by the villagers to be haunted, and they had been known by the above appellations in the family long anterior to the discovery of the door. This interesting old mansion was sold in 1608 to Sir Thomas Edwards, treasurer of the royal household, and subsequently privy-councillor to Charles I., and it was probably during his occupancy that Charles is said to have passed the first night there on his way from Oxford. Since 1834, this house—except a small part of the south front—was pulled down, the fine old trees in which it was embosomed felled, the shrubberies made away with, the pleasure-grounds converted into pasture, and the remains of the house into a dispensary!
The hiding-place in Heale House, near Amesbury, in Wilts, for several days formed a retreat for King Charles II. after the battle of Worcester.
In the course of this century, a movable panel was discovered in a small panelled room in the old manor-house of Chelvey, county of Somerset. This aperture, for some unexplained reason, was closed up hastily, and the spring by which it was opened was said to be lost. In an adjoining room, which was much larger, and panelled in a similar manner, there was a cupboard, the floor of which—afterwards nailed down—had been formerly movable. Underneath was a short flight of steps, which again ascended, and led to a pretty long but very narrow room at the back of the fireplace. This concealed chamber was furnished with an iron sconce projecting from the wall, to hold a candle, and was also provided with a small fireplace.
Parham, which belongs to the Curzon family, has a secret chamber close to the chapel in the roof of the house, and the way down to it is through a bench standing out from the wall.
Captain Duthy, in his History of Hampshire, says ‘that the old house at Hinton-Ampner, in that county, was subjected to the evil report of being haunted; that strange and unaccountable circumstances did occur there, by which the peace and comfort of a most respectable and otherwise strong-minded lady, at that time occupier of the mansion, were essentially interfered with by noises and interruptions that to her appeared awful and unearthly, and which finally led to her giving up the house. Afterwards, on its being taken down, it was discovered that in the thickness of the walls were secret passages and stairs not generally known to exist, which afforded peculiar facilities for any one carrying on without detection the mysteries of a haunted house.’
The following extract, taken from a state paper in the public Record Office, is preserved among others relating to the Rebellion of 1745, and obviously has reference to the search that was being made all over the country for suspected persons. Worksop Manor as it then stood is said to have been burned down in 1761. Examination of Elizabeth Brown, taken upon oath before Richard Bagshaw, the 24th November 1745—‘Who says that nine years ago last spring, upon that Easter Monday, she, Catherine Marshall, and another young woman, went to Worksop Manor to see Elizabeth Walkden, who lived as a servant with the Duke of Norfolk there; and desiring to look at the house, the said Elizabeth Walkden, she believed, showed them most of the rooms of the house; and at last coming upon the leads of the house, and walking and looking about them, the said Elizabeth Walkden said she would let them see a greater variety than they had yet seen; after which she raised up the ledge of a sheet of lead with her knife till she got her fingers under it, and then she desired them to assist her, which they did; and then under that she took up a trap-door where there was a flight of stairs, which they went down, into a little room which was all dark; that the said Elizabeth Walkden opening the window-shutter, there was a fireplace, a bed, and a few chairs in the said room; and asking her what use that room was for, she said it was to hide people in trouble—sometimes. Then the said Elizabeth Walkden went to the side of the room next to the stair-foot, and opened a door in the wainscot about the middle of the height of the room, which they looked into, but it being dark, they could not see anything in it; but the said Elizabeth Walkden said they could not go into it, as it was full of arms; upon which the said Elizabeth Walkden shut the door, and they went up-stairs; and then she shut the trap-door, and laid down the sheet of lead as it was before, which was so nice she could not discern it from another part of the leads, and believes she could not find it if she were there again.’
In a very old house entered from the High Street of Canterbury, and nearly facing Mersey Lane, which leads straight to the cathedral, one of the rooms had a window opening into an adjoining church. In the thickness of the walls there were two or three secret stairs. It was said to have been a nunnery formerly; and that a subterranean passage, it was ascertained, used to unite it with the cathedral.
Woodcote, Hampshire; Coldham House, Suffolk; Watcomb and Maple-Durham, Berkshire; Stonyhurst in Lancashire; Treago, Herefordshire; Harborough Hall, situated midway between Hagley and Kidderminster, all had their secret chambers; and the ancient seat of the Tichbornes was similarly provided, together with a complication of secret passages and stairs.
Compton Wynyates, a remote and picturesque mansion belonging to the Marquis of Northampton, has an upper chapel in the topmost gable, with ancient wooden altar, three staircases leading to the Priest’s room in the lower story, secret passages, and hiding-places behind the wainscoting spacious enough to hold one hundred persons in case of alarm. The existence of such a chapel sufficiently indicates that the rites of the old religion were practised in private, although the Protestant place of worship remained open below.
In Essex, the Wisemans of Braddox or Broadoaks were of the number of those who suffered during the reigns of Elizabeth and James for their noted ‘harbouring of priests.’ In P. R. O. Dom. Elizabeth, vol. 244, n. 7, may be seen two forms of indictment of Richard Jackson, priest, for saying mass at Braddox, and of various members of the Wiseman family for being present at mass on the 25th August and the 8th of September 1592. Again: ‘Mr Worseley and Mr Newall have been to Widow Wiseman’s house in Essex, and found a mass preparing; but the priest escaped.’ There were two hiding-places in Braddox: the most important of these adjoined the chapel, and was constructed in a thick wall of the chimney, behind a finely laid and carved mantel-piece.
In connection with the old mansion of the Carylls at West Grinstead, the Abbé Denis tells us that it also has two hiding-places. ‘One of these is between the mantel-piece and ceiling of the dining-room; and the way to get to it is to go up the flue of the chimney as high as the ceiling of the room on the second floor; and then, by an aperture in the side of the chimney or flue, to drop down into the hiding-hole. Another opening also exists in the chimney of the room above. The second place of concealment is quite underneath the roof of the house. It had likewise two ways of access—the one from an attic, the other from a closet or small room underneath.’ In Benton, the original seat of the Carylls in Sussex, there is one on the ground-floor between two kitchen chimneys, which is entered by an opening in the room at the back. At New Building, a house more recently erected by the Carylls, there are also two secret rooms; one on the second floor, formed in the thickness of the wall between two chimneys, but entered by a concealed door in one of the two adjoining rooms. The other is in the opposite gable, and is entered from the room on the ground-floor below, through the top of a cupboard which stands in the wall close to the chimney.
The walls of the ‘ancient moated and turreted mansion’ of Lyford, Berks, were ‘pierced with concealed galleries and hiding-places;’ one of the latter was excavated in the wall above the gateway.
Several ‘hiding-holes’ have also come to light in the fine old house of Sutton Place, near Guildford, Surrey; and some years ago, a ‘most beautifully embossed leather casket, iron-bound, containing relics of some of the martyred priests,’ was found in one of these places of concealment behind the wainscot panelling of the chapel. A curious printed volume entitled A Sure Haven against Shipwreck was found concealed ‘between the floor and the ceiling.’ It would seem that Brother Nicholas Owen, alias Little John, S.J., ‘that useful cunning joiner of those times,’ was the constructer of many of these secret rooms, to be found in the greater portion of our ‘stately homes of England,’ for we read in Records of the English Provinces that ‘he was divers times hung upon a Topcliff rack in the Tower of London, to compel him to betray the hiding-places he had made up and down the land.’ This said ‘skilful architect’ was afterwards seized, according to the same authority, in company with Fathers Garnet and Oldcorne, in one of the numerous hiding-places in Hendlip House, near Worcester, already referred to in No. 1040 of this Journal. The secret chamber in which these Jesuit Fathers were concealed is thus described in Lingard’s England: ‘The opening was from an upper room through the fireplace. The wooden border of the hearth was made to take up and put down like a trap-door, and the bricks were taken out and replaced in their courses whenever it was used.’ The former Westons of Sutton Place were well known to government as shelterers of priests. It was searched on the 5th of November 1578, by order of the Privy-council, for ‘popish priests;’ and again on the 14th of January 1591, for one Morgan, a ‘massing priest,’ supposed to be ‘lurking there in secret sort.’
The far-famed ‘Burleigh Park by Stamford Town’ is also in possession of a secret chamber. This concealed apartment, of whose existence the family were altogether unaware, was brought to light in the course of this century through the instrumentality of the law agent, and was found to contain furniture of an old-fashioned description, together with several framed engravings. These latter, when agitated by the wind, which found its way in through a broken window-pane, struck against the wall, thereby producing a flapping noise, which had long procured for the adjoining sleeping apartment the designation of ‘the Haunted Room.’
The grand old historic mansion of Knebworth, Herts, like others of similar age and importance, possessed trap-doors, hiding-places, &c.; and underneath a room adjoining the so-styled ‘Haunted Chamber,’ and belonging to one of the square towers of the gateway, there was a mysterious room or oubliette, of which the late Lord Lytton thus speaks: ‘How could I help writing romances, when I had walked, trembling at my own footsteps, through that long gallery with its ghostly portraits, mused in these tapestry chambers, and passed with bristling hair into the shadowy abysses’ of the secret chamber. This portion of Knebworth was pulled down in 1812.
Referring to houses north of the Border having secret chambers, Sir Walter Scott says: ‘There were few Scottish houses belonging to families of rank which had not such contrivances, the political incidents of the times often calling them into occupation.’ ‘The concealed apartment opening by a sliding panel into the parlour,’ in the old mansion-house of Swinton, is made good use of by Sir Walter in his beautiful novel of Peveril of the Peak.
Some ten or twelve years ago, while workmen were employed in making alterations at the house of Nunraw, near the village of Garvald, Haddingtonshire, they came upon a secret chamber in the depth of one of the walls, which on inspection was found to contain some mummies, pictures, and other property. In olden times, Nunraw was a nunnery belonging to the priory of Haddington, and though modernised, still exhibits evident marks of great antiquity.
There is an apartment now used as a bedroom in Sir George Warrender’s house at Bruntsfield, near Edinburgh, which, however, can hardly be called a secret chamber, inasmuch as it possesses windows and two external walls, but having the interior walls on both sides of the entrance of great thickness. The history of this room is somewhat obscure. It is said to have been used as a place of concealment for certain Jacobites after the rebellion of 1745; and blood-stains, which are still distinctly visible on the floor, point remotely to this theory. Another story is that a cadet of the house of Warrender returned from Carlisle about 1760, and shortly afterwards died in this room, which was immediately bricked up, so that all evidences of the event might be removed. In any case, the room had remained sealed up beyond the recollection of any one familiar with the house, and the ivy with which the walls were at this time covered, had almost entirely obliterated any external traces. It was rediscovered about sixty years ago by Lee, the English landscape painter, who, when sketching the house, found himself putting in windows of which he could not remember the rooms. When opened, the room presented the appearance of having been left hurriedly, by a departing guest, everything being in disorder, even to the ashes left undisturbed in the grate. Bruntsfield House dates from 1605.