Catledge Hall, Cambridgeshire, has a small octangular closet adjoining a bedroom, from which formerly there was a secret way on to the leads of the roof.

[Illustration:  MAPLEDURHAM HOUSE, OXFORDSHIRE]

[Illustration:  ENTRANCE TO SECRET STAIRCASE, PARTINGDALE HOUSE, MILL-HILL, MIDDLESEX]

At Dunkirk Hall, near West Bromwich, is a “priest’s hole” in the upper part of the house near “the chapel,” which is now divided into separate rooms.

Mapledurham House, axon, the old seat of the Blounts, contains a “priest’s hole” in the attics, descent into which could be made by the aid of a rope suspended for that purpose.

Upton Court, near Slough, possesses a “priest’s hole,” entered from a fireplace, provided with a double flue—­one for smoke, the other for ventilation to the hiding-place.

Knebworth House, Hertfordshire, formerly had a secret chamber known as “Hell Hole.”

Eastgate House, Rochester (before mentioned), has a hiding-place in one of the upstairs rooms.  It has, however, been altered.

Milsted Manor, Kent, is said to have a secret exit from the library; and Sharsted Court (some three miles distant) has a cleverly marked panel in the wainscoting of “the Tapestry Dressing-room,” which communicates by a very narrow and steep flight of steps in the thickness of the wall with “the Red Bedroom.”

The “Clough Inn,” Chard, Somersetshire, is said by tradition to have possessed three secret rooms!

Cawdor Castle, Nairnshire—­a hiding-place formerly in “the tower.”  Bramhall Hall, Cheshire—­two secret recesses were discovered not long ago during alterations.  The following also contain hiding-places:—­Hall-i’-the-wood, Bolling Hall, Mains Hall, and Huncoat Hall, all in Lancashire; Drayton House, Northants; Packington Old Hall, Warwickshire; Batsden Court, Salop; Melford Hall, Suffolk, Fyfield House, Wilts; “New Building,” Southwater, Sussex; Barsham Rectory, Suffolk; Porter’s Hall, Southend, Essex; Kirkby Knowle Castle and Barnborough Hall, Yorkshire; Ford House, Devon; Cothele, Cornwall; Hollingbourne Manor House, Kent (altered of late years); Salisbury Court, near Shenley, Herts.

Of hiding-places and secret chambers in the ancient castles and mansions upon the Continent we know but little.

Two are said to exist in an old house in the Hradschin in Prague—­one communicating from the foundation to the roof “by a windlass or turnpike.”  A subterranean passage extends also from the house beneath the street and the cathedral, and is said to have its exit in the Hirch Graben, or vast natural moat which bounds the chateau upon the north.

A lady of our acquaintance remembers her feeling of awe when, as a school-girl, she was shown a hiding-place in an old mansion near Baden-Baden—­a huge piece of stone masonry swinging aside upon a pivot and revealing a gloomy kind of dungeon behind.