A priest hole is a hiding place for a priest built in England or Wales during the period when Catholics were persecuted by law. Following the accession of Queen Elizabeth I to the throne in 1558, there were several Catholic plots designed to remove her, and severe measures, including torture and execution, were taken against Catholic priests. From the mid-1570s, hides were built into houses to conceal priests from priest hunters. Most of the hides that survive today are in country manor houses, but there is much documentary evidence, for example in the Autobiography and Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot of John Gerard, of hides in towns and cities, especially in London. who worked in the North. After the Gunpowder Plot, Owen was captured, taken to the Tower of London, and tortured to death on the rack. He was canonised as a martyr by Pope Paul VI in 1970. Holtby was never arrested, and he died peacefully in 1640.

Background

The legal restrictions on Catholic worship, promulgated shortly after the accession of Queen Elizabeth I, became much harsher as a result of Catholic resistance against her, including the Rising of the North (1569), the Papal Bull Regnans In Excelsis (1570), which excommunicated Elizabeth and released Catholics from their allegiance to her, the return of the first seminary priests in the 1570s, the arrival of the Jesuits from 1580 onwards, The 1584 Act changed everything, making it too dangerous for a priest to stay in any one place for more than a day or two, as their arrest would make their hosts liable to execution. In response to this, and following a conference and prayer meeting of the Jesuits and other seminaries held at Harleyford in July 1586), a new strategy was adopted under which each priest would be stationed long-term in a single country house and such houses would be systematically equipped with hides. Previously, few if any, actual hides existed, and the priests had been largely itinerant, but this involved staying at inns, and many were arrested while travelling. Simultaneously, an 'underground railroad' was set up to smuggle priests into the country and move them to holding centres (called 'receptacles') until a long term posting became available.

Location and use

thumb|right|One of the hides at [[Harvington Hall, accessed by tilting a step on the grand staircase.]]

An English country house "was more than simply a family home. It combined some of the functions of a museum, a local government office, a farm and a hotel." "If it was a recusant house, it was also a church, a presbytery and something of a thieves' Alsatia." The conflict between the public nature of some of these functions and the need for security, meant that priest holes and recusant chapels are almost always found on the upper floors of houses, well away from the majority of the easily-bribed estate workers and affording an extra few minutes to reach a hide when search parties arrived. Houses with thick stone walls offered many options for excavating hides, but in brick or timber-framed houses, hides are usually located in or around chimneystacks or staircases. Hides large enough to hold a person were known as 'conveyances', but there are also many examples of small hidden spaces to accommodate vestments, sacred vessels, and altar furniture, which were known as 'secret corners'.

The novelists' favourite entrance - a secret door in the panelling - is rather rare, but there is one example at Ripley Castle in North Yorkshire. Such hides are on the outside walls of buildings and betray themselves as large areas of windowless brickwork, a fact that became known to the searchers. Search-parties would bring with them skilled carpenters and masons He might be half-starved, cramped, sore with prolonged confinement, and almost afraid to breathe lest the least sound should throw suspicion upon the particular spot where he was concealed.

Searches had mixed success: Edmund Campion was found in a hide during a search in 1581 because the searchers saw light shining through between two planks.

One of Owen's priest holes plays a key role in the Catherine Aird mystery novel A Most Contagious Game (1967). A priest hole attributed to him is also part of Peter Carey's novel Parrot and Olivier in America (2010).

Buildings with priest holes

Map of all buildings and sites known or believed to have Priest Holes

  • Baddesley Clinton
  • Boscobel House
  • Bramall Hall
  • Carlton Towers
  • Coughton Court
  • Hailsham
  • Harvington Hall
  • Moseley Old Hall
  • Oxburgh Hall
  • Ripley Castle
  • Scotney Castle
  • Soulton Hall
  • Speke Hall
  • Towneley Hall
  • Tue Brook House
  • Ufton Court

See also

  • Priest hunter
  • Anti-Catholicism in the United Kingdom
  • English and Irish Penal Laws
  • Come Rack! Come Rope!

References

  • Secret Chambers and Hiding Places, by Allan Fea, an eText at Project Gutenberg.
  • Article in The Blackpool Gazette (16 October 2006): 'Priest hole found in Tudor Hall', featuring a priest hole discovered by the owner of Mains Hall, Singleton, Lancashire
  • BBC Black Country feature (10 December 2005) about a priest hole in Moseley Old Hall, Wolverhampton, that harbored Charles II in 1651 as he fled from Cromwell's army
  • Top 5 priest holes of England, with text and photos
  • [https://www.livescience.com/57389-uk-mansion-secret-priest-hole-photos.html] Priest hole in mansion explained