CONCEALED DOORS, SUBTERRANEAN PASSAGES, ETC.
Numerous old houses possess secret doors, passages, and
staircases--Franks, in Kent; Eshe Hall, Durham; Binns House,
Scotland; Dannoty Hall, and Whatton Abbey, Yorkshire; are examples.
The last of these has a narrow flight of steps leading down to
the moat, as at Baddesley Clinton. The old house Marks, near
Romford, pulled down in 1808 after many years of neglect and
decay--as well as the ancient seat of the Tichbournes in Hampshire,
pulled down in 1803--and the west side of Holme Hall, Lancashire,
demolished in the last century, proved to have been riddled with
hollow walls. Secret doors and panels are still pointed out at
Bramshill, Hants (in the long gallery and billiard-room); the
oak room, Bochym House, Cornwall; the King's bedchamber, Ford
Castle, Northumberland; the plotting-parlour of the White Hart
Hotel, Hull; Low Hall, Yeadon, Yorkshire; Sawston; the Queen's
chamber at Kimbolton Castle, Huntingdonshire, etc., etc.
A concealed door exists on the left-hand side of the fireplace
of the gilt room of Holland House, Kensington, associated by
tradition with the ghost of the first Lord Holland. Upon the
authority of the Princess Lichtenstein, it appears there is,
close by, a blood-stain which nothing can efface! It is to be
hoped no enterprising person may be induced to try his skill here
with the success that attended a similar attempt at Holyrood,
as recorded by Scott![1]
[Footnote 1: _Vide_ Introduction to _The Fair Maid of
Perth_]
In the King's writing-closet at Hampton Court may be seen the
"secret door" by which William III. left the palace when he wished
to go out unobserved; but this is more of a _private_ exit
than a _secret_ one.
[Illustration: WOODSTOCK PALACE, OXFORDSHIRE (FROM AN OLD PRINT)]
[Illustration: MARKYATE CELL, HERTFORDSHIRE]
The old Château du Puits, Guernsey, has a hiding-hole placed
between two walls which form an acute angle; the one constituting
part of the masonry of an inner courtyard, the other a wall on
the eastern side of the main structure. The space between could
be reached through the floor of an upper room.
Cussans, in his _History of Hertfordshire_, gives a curious
account of the discovery of an iron door up the kitchen chimney
of the old house Markyate Cell, near Dunstable. A short flight
of steps led from it to another door of stout oak, which opened
by a secret spring, and led to an unknown chamber on the ground
level. Local tradition says this was the favourite haunt of a
certain "wicked Lady Ferrers," who, disguised in male attire,
robbed travellers upon the highway, and being wounded in one
of these exploits, was discovered lying dead outside the walls
of the house; and the malignant nature of this lady's spectre
is said to have had so firm a hold upon the villagers that no
local labourer could be induced to work upon that particular
part of the building.
Beare Park, near Middleham, Yorkshire, had a hiding-hole entered
from the kitchen chimney, as had also the Rookery Farm, near
Cromer; West Coker Manor House; and The Chantry, at Ilminster,
both in Somerset. At the last named, in another hiding-place in
the room above, a bracket or credence-table was found, which
is still preserved.
Many weird stories are told about Bovey House, South Devon, situated
near the once notorious smuggling villages of Beer and Branscombe.
Upon removing some leads of the roof a secret room was found,
furnished with a chair and table. The well here is remarkable,
and similar to that at Carisbrooke, with the exception that two
people take the place of the donkey! Thirty feet below the ground
level there is said to have been a hiding-place--a large cavity
cut in the solid rock. Many years ago a skeleton of a man was
found at the bottom. Such dramatic material should suggest to some
sensational novelist a tragic story, as the well and lime-walk at
Ingatestone is said to have suggested _Lady Audley's Secret_.
A hiding-place something after the same style existed in the now
demolished manor house of Besils Leigh, Berks. Down the shaft
of a chimney a cavity was scooped out of the brickwork, to which
a refugee had to be lowered by a rope. One of the towers of the
west gate of Bodiam Castle contains a narrow square well in the
wall leading to the ground level, and, as the guide was wont
to remark, "how much farther the Lord only knows"! This sort
of thing may also be seen at Mancetter Manor, Warwickshire, and
Ightham Moat, Kent, both approached by a staircase.
A communication formerly ran from a secret chamber in the
oak-panelled dining-room of Birtsmorton Court, Worcestershire,
to a passage beneath the moat that surrounds the structure, and
thence to an exit on the other side of the water. During the Wars
of the Roses Sir John Oldcastle is said to have been concealed
behind the secret panel; but now the romance is somewhat marred,
for modern vandalism has converted the cupboard into a repository
for provisions. The same indignity has taken place at that splendid
old timber house in Cheshire, Moreton Hall, where a secret room,
provided with a sleeping-compartment, situated over the kitchen,
has been modernised into a repository for the storing of cheeses.
From the hiding-place the moat could formerly be reached, down
a narrow shaft in the wall.
Chelvey Court, near Bristol, contained two hiding-places; one,
at the top of the house, was formerly entered through a panel,
the other (a narrow apartment having a little window, and an
iron candle-holder projecting from the wall) through the floor
of a cupboard.[1] Both the panel and the trap-door are now done
away with, and the tradition of the existence of the secret rooms
almost forgotten, though not long since we received a letter
from an antiquarian who had seen them thirty years before, and
who was actually entertaining the idea of making practical
investigations with the aid of a carpenter or mason, to which,
as suggested, we were to be a party; the idea, however, was never
carried out.
[Footnote 1: See _Notes and Queries_, September, 1855.]
[Illustration: BIRTSMORTON COURT, WORCESTERSHIRE]
[Illustration: PORCH, CHELVEY COURT, SOMERSETSHIRE]
Granchester Manor House, Cambridgeshire, until recently possessed
three places of concealment. Madingley Hall, in the same
neighbourhood, has two, one of them entered from a bedroom on the
first floor, has a space in the thickness of the wall high enough
for a man to stand upright in it. The manor house of Woodcote,
Hants, also possessed two, which were each capable of holding from
fifteen to twenty men, but these repositories are now opened
out into passages. One was situated behind a stack of chimneys,
and contained an inner hiding-place. The "priests' quarters"
in connection with the hiding-places are still to be seen.
Harborough Hall, Worcestershire, has two "priests' holes," one
in the wall of the dining-room, the other behind a chimney in
an upper room.
The old mansion of the Brudenells, in Northamptonshire, Deene
Park, has a large secret chamber at the back of the fireplace
in the great hall, sufficiently capacious to hold a score of
people. Here also a hidden door in the panelling leads towards
a subterranean passage running in the direction of the ruinous
hall of Kirby, a mile and a half distant. In a like manner a
passage extended from the great hall of Warleigh, an Elizabethan
house near Plymouth, to an outlet in a cliff some sixty yards
away, at whose base the tidal river flows.
Speke Hall, Lancashire (perhaps the finest specimen extant of
the wood-and-plaster style of architecture nicknamed "Magpie "),
formerly possessed a long underground communication extending
from the house to the shore of the river Mersey; a member of
the Norreys family concealed a priest named Richard Brittain
here in the year 1586, who, by this means, effected his escape
by boat.
The famous secret passage of Nottingham Castle, by which the
young King Edward III. and his loyal associates gained access
to the fortress and captured the murderous regent and usurper
Mortimer, Earl of March, is known to this day as "Mortimer's
Hole." It runs up through the perpendicular rock upon which the
castle stands, on the south-east side from a place called Brewhouse
yard, and has an exit in what was originally the courtyard of the
building. The Earl was seized in the midst of his adherents and
retainers on the night of October 19th, 1330, and after a skirmish,
notwithstanding the prayers and entreaties of his paramour Queen
Isabella, he was bound and carried away through the passage in
the rock, and shortly afterwards met his well-deserved death on
the gallows at Smithfield.
But what ancient castle, monastery, or hall has not its traditional
subterranean passage? Certainly the majority are mythical; still,
there are some well authenticated. Burnham Abbey, Buckinghamshire,
for example, or Tenterden Hall, Hendon, had passages which have
been traced for over fifty yards; and one at Vale Royal,
Nottinghamshire, has been explored for nearly a mile. In the
older portions in both of the great wards of Windsor Castle arched
passages thread their way below the basement, through the chalk,
and penetrate to some depth below the site of the castle ditch
at the base of the walls.[1] In the neighbourhood of Ripon
subterranean passages have been found from time to time--tunnels
of finely moulded masonry supposed to have been connected at
one time with Fountains Abbey.
[Footnote 1: See Marquis of Lorne's (Duke of Argyll) _Governor's
Guide to Windsor_.]
A passage running from Arundel Castle in the direction of Amberley
has also been traced for some considerable distance, and a man and
a dog have been lost in following its windings, so the entrance
is now stopped up. About three years ago a long underground way
was discovered at Margate, reaching from the vicinity of Trinity
Church to the smugglers' caves in the cliffs; also at Port Leven,
near Helston, a long subterranean tunnel was discovered leading to
the coast, no doubt very useful in the good old smuggling days.
At Sunbury Park, Middlesex, was found a long vaulted passage some
five feet high and running a long way under the grounds. Numerous
other examples could be stated, among them at St. Radigund's
Abbey, near Dover; Liddington Manor House, Wilts; the Bury,
Rickmansworth; "Sir Harry Vane's House," Hampstead, etc., etc.