Harvington Hall

So many things are discovered.

So you get priesthoods that are still recently, only recently being discovered, the best being a swinging beam hide at Harvington Hall, which was discovered by a little boy exploring.

But the Tresham Papers was builders, often it's builders.

And they were just knocking through a wall and suddenly all these books tumbled out.

Footnote.

Harvington Hall, mentioned hereafter, has a contrivance of this kind.

End of footnote.

The hiding-place at Earnham, which measures eight feet by five, and about five feet six inches in height, was discovered by a tell-tale chimney that was not in the least blackened by soot or smoke.

we will now go in search of some of the most curious hiding-places in existence there are numerous known examples all over the country and perhaps as many again exist which will preserve their secret forever for more than three hundred years they have remained buried and unless some accident reveals their locked-up mysteries they will crumble away with the walls which contain them unless indeed fire the doom of so many of our ancestral halls reduces them to ashes and swallows up the weird stories they might have told in many cases not until an ancient building is pulled down are such strange discoveries made but alas there are as many instances where structural alterations have wantonly destroyed these interesting historical landmarks unaccounted-for spaces when detected are readily utilized passages are bodily run through the heart of many a secret device with little veneration for the mechanical ingenuity that has been displayed in their construction the builder of to-day as a rule knows nothing of and cares less for such things and so they are swept away without a thought to such vandals we can only emphasize the remarks we have already made about the market value of a priest-hole nowadays A little to the right of the Kidderminster Road, and about two miles from the pretty village of Chadsley Corbett with its old timber houses and inn, stands the ghostly old hall of Harvington.

The ancient red-brick pile rises out of its reed-grown moat with that air of mystery which age and seeming neglect only can impart.

coming upon it unexpectedly especially towards dusk one is struck with the strange dignified melancholy pervading it surely hood's haunted house or poe's house of ussher stands before us and we cannot get away from the impression that a mystery is wrapped within its walls harvington hall dates from the reign of henry the eighth but it has undergone various changes so it is difficult to affix any particular period or style to its architecture indeed it is this medley of different styles which forms such a poetically picturesque outline in its day harvington could doubtless hold its own with the finest mansions in the country but now it is forgotten deserted and crumbling to pieces its very history appears to be lost to the world as those who go to the county histories and general topographical works for information will find inside the mansion like the exterior the hand of decay is perceptible on every side the rooms are ruined the windows broken the floors unsafe excepting by the way a small portion of the building which is habitable a ponderous broad oak staircase leads to a dismantled state-room shorn of the principal part of its panelling carving and chimney-pieces footnote most of the interior fittings were removed to coughton court warwickshire other desolate apartments retain their names as if in mockery the drawing-room the chapel lady yates's nursery and so forth at the top of the staircase however we must look around carefully for beneath the stairs is a remarkable hiding-place with a slight stretch of the imagination we can see an indistinct form stealthily remove the floor-board of one of the stairs and creep beneath it this particular step of a short flight running from the landing into a garret, is, upon closer inspection, indeed movable, and beneath gapes a dark cavity about five feet square, on the floor of which still remains the piece of sedge matting whereon a certain Father Wall rested his aching limbs a few days prior to his capture and execution in August 1679. the unfortunate man was taken at rushock court a few miles away where he was traced after leaving halvington there is a communication between the hiding-place and the banqueting-room through a small concealed aperture in the wainscoting large enough to admit of a tube through which a straw could be thrust for the unhappy occupant to suck up any liquid his friends might be able to supply in a gloomy corridor leading from the tower to the reception-room is another priest's hole beneath the floor and entered by a trap-door artfully hidden in the boards this black recess is some seven feet in depth and can be made secure from within supposing the searchers had tracked a fugitive priest as far as this corridor the odds are in favour that they would have passed over his head in their haste to reach the tower where they would make sure in their own minds at least of discovering him Again, here there is a communication with the outside world.

An oblong aperture in the top oak beam of the entrance gateway to the house, measuring about four inches across, is the secret opening, small enough to escape the most inquisitive eye, yet large enough to allow of a written note to pass between the captive and those upon the alert watching his interests.