old summer house, Salisbury
Chastleton, Oxfordshire
     " Front entrance, Oxfordshire
Broughton hall, Staffordshire
st. John’s hospital, Warwick
staircase, Broughton hall
Shipton court, Oxfordshire
Broughton castle, Oxfordshire
entrance gate, Bradshawe hall, Derbyshire
Moyles court, Hampshire
Toddington manor house, Bedfordshire, in 1806
“Rat’s castle,” Elmley
king’s Hill farm, Elmley, Kent
entrance to secret passage, “Abdication house,” Rochester
“Abdication house,” Rochester
Monument of sir Richard head
“Restoration house,” Rochester
Armscot manor house, WORCHESTERSHIRE
entrance gate, Armscot manor house
Woodstock palace, Oxfordshire
Markyate cell, Hertfordshire
Birtsmorton court, Worcestershire
porch at Chelvey court, Somersetshire
Hurstmonceaux castle, Sussex
Bovey house, south Devon
Mapledurham house, Oxfordshire
     " " "
Entrance to secret staircase, Partingdale house, mill Hill, Middlesex

INTRODUCTION

The secret chamber is unrivalled even by the haunted house for the mystery and romance surrounding it.  Volumes have been written about the haunted house, while the secret chamber has found but few exponents.  The ancestral ghost has had his day, and to all intents and purposes is dead, notwithstanding the existence of the Psychical Society and the investigations of Mr. Stead and the late Lord Bute.  “Alas! poor ghost!” he is treated with scorn and derision by the multitude in these advanced days of modern enlightenment.  The search-light of science has penetrated even into his sacred haunts, until, no longer having a leg to stand upon, he has fallen from the exalted position he occupied for centuries, and fallen moreover into ridicule!

In the secret chamber, however, we have something tangible to deal with—­a subject not only keenly interesting from an antiquarian point of view, but one deserving the attention of the general reader; for in exploring the gloomy hiding-holes, concealed apartments, passages, and staircases in our old halls and manor houses we probe, as it were, into the very groundwork of romance.  We find actuality to support