In 1380 the 4th Earl of Arundel, Richard Fitzalan, founded a secular College of Canons, that is to say, a community of clergy to maintain daily worship and pray for the souls of the founder’s family. This initiated the building of the church you see today. From the beginning the church was divided into two parts, with the nave accommodating the people of the parish and the chancel as the collegiate chapel and chantry. An iron grille, which you can still see today, separated the two parts of the church.*

This arrangement was common in many churches in England. What sets Arundel apart is that on 12th December 1544, just before Henry VIII ordered the abolition of the chantries, the 12th Earl shrewdly surrendered the College to the king, who a few days later sold it back to the Earl for 1,000 marks and an annual rent. The collegiate chapel, therefore, was taken out of the hands of the Church and became the private property of the Earl and his descendants. The Chapel, now know as the Fitzalan Chapel, can only be accessed through the castle. *

In 1879 an action heard before Lord Chief Justice Coleridge determined that the Fitzalan Chapel did not form part of the parish church but was an independant ecclesiastical structure. The chapel has therefore remained Catholic, an unusual, if not unique, anomaly in England. It is dedicated to the Holy Trinity, Blessed Virgin Mary and All Saints. The parish church is dedicated to St Nicholas.**

The chapel is still used as the burial place of the Dukes of Norfolk and several masses are said here every year for the repose of their souls in accordance with the intention of the founder in the 14th century. The major artistic interest of the Fitzalan Chapel lies in the tombs of the Earls of Arundel and Dukes of Norfolk which form one of the finest assemblages of their kind in England.**

*From a Church of St Nicholas Arundel leaflet

**From an Arundel Castle leaflet on the Fitzalan Chapel

The Library is the principle survivor of the 11th Duke’s work and is one of the most important Gothic rooms of circa 1800 in the country. It is 122 feet (38 meters)long, entirely fitted out in carved Honduras mahogany and treated as if it were a church, with slender clustered columns supporting a ribbed vault. *

The Library is one of the more important country house collections, rich in manuscript and printed material relating to Catholic history. It comprises ten thousand books and was collected by the 9th and 11th Dukes.*

*From the Arundel Castle guidebook

The Bishop’s Palace, Ely was one of the residences of the Bishop of Ely from the 15th century until 1941. It is a Grade I listed building.^[1]

The palace was built in the 15th century by Bishop John Alcock however just two towers from the original building remain. He also completed the bishop’s palace (now Wisbech Castle) at Wisbech (where he died in 1500). Bishops over the following centuries expanded and remodelled the palace.^[1]

In 1541, King Henry VIII founded a College of Canons at Ely Cathedral to replace the monks whose monastery had been dissolved in 1539

The Bishop’s Palace at Ely was used as a prison for Catholics between 1577 and 1597, and between 1588 and 1597 was exclusively a prison for lay recusants. Its inmates included Abbot John Feckenham between 1577 and 1580 and Thomas Tresham, who was imprisoned in Ely four times.

Dorney Court is a Grade I listed Tudor manor house and is situated in the village of Dorney which lies on a slight rise in the Thames floodplain, Dorney means Island of Bumble Bees and the estate is renowned for its honey which is still produced to this day. The house has changed little since its 15th century origins. The first known record of a house at Dorney is dated just after the Norman Conquest.

The house is panelled in wood and contains many interesting treasures, paintings and artefacts and it even has a ghost. The upper floor rooms have barrel vaulted chambers, one of which, the great chamber is held up by ancient twig branches.

Photo copyright Dorney Court

Stepping into the great hall is like stepping back in time. The wall panelling was once in Faversham Abbey and the fireplace predates the current Hall. Two tables are placed in the room, one on a dais for the Lord and Lady of the Manor and another for family, guests and villagers in the hall below. In Tudor times this is where they would have dined. This room used to hold the manor court which may still be legally held there today. The most recent court was held to sort out matters related to Dorney Common after the Second World War during which parts of the Common were requisitioned by the government.

Photo copyright Dorney Court

Dorney Court is home to the Palmers and has been handed down from father to son in succession since 1620 and prior to that, through marriage to the Garrards, since 1538.

The Palmer lineage goes back as far as Charlemagne, the founding father of both the French and German monarchies (747-814). John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster, the Baldwins of Flanders and the Plantagenet Kings of England are other notable Palmer ancestors.

The name Palmer goes back to the crusades, Crusaders returning from the First Crusade were referred to as ‘Palmers’ for the tradition of returning home with palm-branches. From one of those crusaders descended the present occupiers of Dorney.

Not all of the Palmer family renounced their Catholic faith and they continued to practice their religion which led to their indictment for recusancy.

In the 1600s Roger Palmer (1634-1705) married Barbara Villiers whose notorious behaviour brought her to the notice of Charles II. She mothered a daughter who was born in 1661 (Anne). The King insisted that Anne be referred to as ‘Fitzroy’ (child of the King). Despite Roger’s loyalty to the monarchy, he was imprisoned on more than one occasion for his staunch support of Catholicism.

Henry Palmer (born 1646) was in the army at St. Omers when in September 1668 where he was wounded. On 1st May 1679 he was indicted for recusancy. On his way to his trial in England the passage boat was cast away and he drowned in sight of Calais.

Charles Palmer (1651-1714) was a Catholic and serving soldier. He resigned at the time of the Glorious Revolution which saw King James II being overthrown in favour of Prince William of Orange who became William III of England. In 1693 Charles was indicted for Recusancy.

In 1842 Henry Palmer became Vicar of Dorney, his name can be seen on the list of rectors and ministers within the Church of St. John the Less.

Photo copyright Dorney Court

Not surprisingly with the family’s rich Catholic heritage, in recent years the house has revealed a secret. Whilst undertaking property renovations in the parlour an entrance to a priest hole was found in the south west corner. It is thought to be connected to Burnham Abbey via a secret passage.

Sources:

Hurley Priory, located on the banks of the River Thames was founded in 1086 by Geoffrey Mandeville I as a cell of Westminster Abbey. After declaring himself head of the English Church, Henry VIII suppressed the priory in 1536 and ownership was transferred to Westminster Abbey. When in 1540 Westminster Abbey was dissolved Hurley Priory passed into lay hands.

Jeff Griffiths from Archaeology in Marlow provides a fascinating account of the village of Hurley and the history of the priory:

The biggest change ever to affect the village happened when Geoffrey de Mandeville founded a Benedictine priory in 1086 in memory of his first wife. The Priory was central to the life of the village for 450 years until Henry VIII’s reforms swept it away in 1536. Its Abbot and monks were more fortunate than most at the Dissolution as they could retreat to the protected mother house at Westminster, taking with them the Priory’s 562 charters, which still exist. These charters reveal that the Abbey of Westminster had exchanged one of its London properties to acquire a forested area near its daughter house. The London property exchanged for Hurley Wood was no less than Covent Garden.

After the Dissolution, Hurley’s monastic estate passed into the hands of John Lovelace in 1545 and this family then became Lords of the Manor. The Lovelaces built a mansion called Ladye Place on the site of the ruined Priory. The first Sir Richard Lovelace went on an expedition with Sir Francis Drake and it’s been said that their fine Elizabethan mansion arose in 1600 from “the legalised piracy of a licensed buccaneer”.

The most significant of the Lovelaces was John, the 3rd Lord Lovelace, who played a significant role in the Glorious or Bloodless Revolution of 1688. He was an ardent anti-Catholic who’d been jailed for complicity in the Rye House plot to assassinate King Charles II and his brother and heir James. Lovelace became a staunch supporter of the cause for the Protestant William of Orange to take over the throne from the Catholic James II. The crypt at Ladye Place, once part of the original Priory, became a centre of plotting and it’s said that fellow aristocratic conspirators would enter by way of underground tunnels that led from the river to the crypt to avoid detection. This crypt, which still stands in private grounds on the old monastic estate at Hurley, became a centre of pilgrimage for those who valued the liberties that had been safeguarded by the plot hatched there. William of Orange and George III both visited this crypt where commemorative tablets record this momentous event in England’s history.

This 3rd Lord Lovelace, however, was a dissolute individual – the Master of an Oxford college said he drank a Quart of Brandy every morning – who left the estate heavily in debt. His son, having no estate to inherit, went to America where he became the Governor of New York State. A township there called Hurley commemorates the link with Lovelace’s Berkshire home. The last Lovelace heir in America died without issue and the line became extinct.

The Elizabethan Ladye Place eventually became derelict and was pulled down in 1838. Much later a smaller house also called Ladye Pace was erected next to the church.

The second house in Hurley to bear the name Ladye Place was purchased in 1924 by Colonel Rivers-Moore, a retired Royal Engineer. He was intrigued by the surrounding monastic remains and determined to undertake archaeological investigations as the site had hardly ever been touched. He was particularly intrigued by the prospect of finding the tomb of Editha, Edward the Confessor’s sister, whose ghost, known as the Grey Lady, was supposed to haunt the place. By a stroke of luck, a particularly dry summer revealed the outline of the old Lovelace mansion, which stood on the remains of Hurley Priory and trial excavations started. It’s reputed that family members then began to have visions of a monk instructing them where to find discoveries and that they held séances to seek guidance as to where they should dig.

In the summer of 2007, a party from the Thames Valley Dowsers investigated the reputed underground tunnel that runs from the Olde Bell hotel [see my previous post] to the remains of the old Priory behind the church. A cupboard in a bar at the Olde Bell reveals a crumbling staircase entrance which is supposed to lead to the tunnels. Next door to the hotel, Hurley House had a trapdoor through which access to the tunnel had been gained. Dowsing highlighted two tunnels that run from the Olde Bell to the old Ladye Place crypt and then to a property known as the Cloisters, the remains of the old Priory behind the church. Set into the Cloisters’ lawns are gratings which cover entrances to underground tunnels that have been explored and led to the moat, underpinning the stories of the plotters in 1688 surreptitiously entering the crypt by tunnel.

I recommend reading Jeff Griffith’s full article; Hurley’s Hidden History.

On my recent visit to the Olde Bell in Hurley I noticed some information above a wooden panel next to the fireplace. I was intrigued by it and took a closer look. The photo and words informed that a passage runs from the cellar of the Olde Bell to the Village Priory and the passage was accessed by concealed panelling next to the inglenook fireplace.

The Olde Bell first opened its doors in 1135 AD as a guesthouse for visitors to the nearby Benedictine Priory. For hundreds of years, the ringing of the Sanctus Bell signalled to the monks that an important visitor had arrived in the village and was on his way to call at their monastic retreat beside the River Thames. The Sanctus Bell still hangs over the door of The Olde Bell, a sign of welcome and refreshment to travellers.

There is a secret passage running from the cellar of The Olde Bell to the Priory in the village. The secret passage was used by Lord Lovelace of Hurley who was a plotter of the ‘Glorious Revolution’ in 1688 which drove the Catholic James II into exile and placed his son-in-law William of Orange jointly with his wife, James’s daughter Mary, on the throne.

Content coming soon

Update 18/09/17 – links to currently uploaded posts added below. I have some posts yet to be written. I also need to add an intro to this post

Update 25/07/23 – I still need to write the intro

People:

Imprisoned – John Gerard, Catholic Priest, 1597

John Gerard’s story told in the Salt Tower, Tower of London

The Autobiography of a Hunted Priest by John Gerard

Book Review

St Nicholas Owen Priest-Hole Maker by Tony Reynolds

Book Review

Blessed John Wall

Glass window dedication at Harvington Hall

Places:

Traquaire – The House

A refuge for Catholic priests

Little Malvern Priory

A safe house for Catholics with an chapel in the attic and what may have been secret access to the chapel

Moseley Old Hall

An Old Catholic family provides refuge for Charles I

Harvington Hall – Priest Hides

A tour of the priest hides in pictures and words

The Chapel – Harvington Hall

Attic chapel with a hide for ‘massing stuff’

Ye Olde Bell

Guesthouse with a secret tunnel to the nearby Priory – Used by Lord Lovelace of Hurley (a plotter of the ‘Glorious Revolution’)

Hurley Priory

History, Lord Lovelace connection and secret tunnels.

Dorney Court and its Recusancy Connections

This house reveals a recently discovered priest hole that is thought to be connect to Burnham Abbey via a secret passage.

The Old Bishop’s Palace – Ely

A prison for 32 Catholic recusants between 1588-97

Arundel

After King Henry VIII parted from the Church of Rome and declared himself Head of The Church of England missionary priests were able to continue their teachings in Arundel.

Plots:

Remember Remember…

An account of the Gunpowder Plot

The Habington Chest

Habington’s chest in the Worcester City Art Gallery and Museum

The Birthplace of Guido Fawkes

Guido Fawkes, was caught in the basement of the Houses of Parliament as he prepared to ignite hidden barrels of gunpowder.

This chapel was used from about 1590 until the opening of the Georgian Chapel in 1743. It contains three features, from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, which illustrate the gradual easing of persecution over the century and a half. At first all ‘Massing Stuff’ had to be concealed when not in use, and so, in the north-west corner, two floor-boards cover a small hide for vestments and church plate – a ’secret corner’, as opposed to a ‘conveyance’, which was a hide big enough for a man.*

During the 18th century it became the custom to use a chest-of-drawers as an altar and simply store the vestments in it. Against the north wall is a chest-of-drawers which was used in this way. and still is when Mass is said here. *

*From the Harvington Hall guidebook by Michael Hodgetts

Harvington Hall, a medieval and Elizabethan manor house situated on an island surrounded by a moat is in the ownership of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Birmingham.

A house full of secrets, Harvington Hall was built in the 1580s by Humphrey Pakington, who was a recusant Catholic under the Protestant rule of Elizabeth I. The hall brings to life the fascinating history of the survival of Catholic families and clergymen at a time when it was high treason for a Catholic priest to be in England. The remarkable survival of its priests’ hiding places and rare Elizabethan wall paintings, together with its unique character, make Harvington Hall an extraordinary place with a captivating story, never to be forgotten.*

In 1696 the house passed to the Throckmorton family and remained in their hands until 1923. The Throckmortons also owned and lived in the nearby Coughton Court, which led to Harvington being stripped of items and fittings to be installed in Coughton including the grand staircase. The house was left to become derelict until, in 1923, it was purchased and donated to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Birmingham. The house has now been fully restored including a replica staircase; the original of which can still be seen at Coughton Court.

Harvington Hall boasts the largest surviving collection of priests’ hiding places in the country. Built in the time of Humphrey Pakington (1555-1631), some of these hides are believed to be the work of the ingenious carpenter and hide-builder, Nicholas Owen, who was arrested in 1606 and tortured to death in the Tower of London.*

The first hide that is encountered on the guided tour of the house is situated above the bread oven within the thickness of the chimney stack. This hide was accessed by a trapdoor in the garderobe in the room above the kitchen.

On the first floor, the Withdrawing Room also hides a priest hide behind wood panelling next to the fireplace. On the opposite side of the fireplace the original 16^th century ladder for accessing the hide can be seen.

The Great Chamber, next door to the Withdrawing Room, conceals a hide above the ceiling of the Butler’s pantry in the corner of the chamber. Entry for this hide was from the top floor and the difference in levels was obscured by a panelled porch which covered the door from the Chamber to the Pantry and also from the Chamber to the Great Staircase.

A very ingenious hide was unearthed in 1894 within Dodd’s Library. Inside a space that was originally a book cupboard is a hinged wall panel that, when pushed at the top, swings up to reveal a space behind.

On the top floor of the house is a priest’s room which has a hidden space under the floor where the vestments, the church plate and other items for mass could be concealed when not in use. On this floor is another smaller chapel with walls decorated with rows of red and white drops representing the blood and water of the Passion.

Round the corner from the small chapel is the Marble Room where a false fireplace in the corner of the room gives access to the attic space and a further priest hole in the corner of the roof. The fireplace has been blackened to simulate smoke discolouring so that it appears to have been used.

Five steps, which are original, lead down to the grand staircase. Two of the steps when lifted reveal a small cavity (the back of which is now missing), where money and valuables could be hidden. Originally this drew the eye from the larger cavity that was concealed behind; a priest hide measuring 5ft 9ins by 5ft and 6ft high. This hide is above the butler’s pantry next to the Great Chamber, and as are the other hides located around the grand staircase thought to be the work of Nicholas Owen.

Owen was servant to Fr Henry Garnet, the Jesuit superior in England, who during the 1590s built up a network of houses throughout the country to which incoming priests could be directed and where they could find disguises, chapels and priest holes.

The centre of this operation for Worcestershire and the Welsh Marches was Hindlip House, the home of Humphrey’s friend Thomas Habington, where the Jesuit Edward Oldcorne arrived in 1590.It was there that Garnet, Owen and Oldcorne were all captured in 1606, just after the Gunpowder Plot.

Owen was starved out of one of his own hides on the fourth day of a twelve day search, during which he and a companion, Ralph Ashley, had nothing to eat but one apple between them. He died under torture in the Tower; Garnet, Oldcorne and Ashley were all hanged, drawn and quartered. Although Hindlip was demolished in 1814, descriptions of the hides there show a striking similarity to those that survive at Harvington.**

—

• *From 2017 Harvington Hall leaflet
• ** From Harvington Hall Website
• Further source of information – Harvington Hall guidebook by Michael Hodgetts

NB: All photos including the individual photos in the mosaics can be viewed full size here.

For two days, in September 1651, the destiny of Britain was decided within the walls of Moseley Old Hall.

In January 1649 Charles I had been executed in Whitehall, the monarchy had been abolished and the country declared a Commonwealth. The hopes of the Royalist Cause now rested on the shoulders of his eighteen-year-old son, Charles II, who was in exile in France. In the late summer of 1651 Charles marched south from Scotland with an army of 16,000 men in a final effort to reclaim the throne. But on 3 September outside Worcester his army was annihilated, and for the next 41 days he was on the run, with a price of £1000 on his head.*

Early on the morning of 8 September the bedraggled figure of the King arrived at the back door of Moseley Old Hall. He had had no sleep and little to eat since the day of the battle. He was disguised in rough woodsman’s clothes with ill-fitting shoes that made his feet bleed. He was cold, wet and desperate. Standing waiting to greet him were the owner of the house, Thomas Whitgreave, and his priest, Father Huddleston.

Like many in this area of Staffordshire, Whitgreave was a Catholic, and his mother Alice, who was also in the house, had suffered heavy fines for their faith from the Parliamentary authorities. They welcomed the King inside, gave him dry clothes and food, and found him a safe hiding place in one of Moseley’s ‘priest’s holes’. Here he crouched the following afternoon, while Whitgreave confronted a Parliamentary search party in the road outside.*

The priest hole was hidden beneath a cupboard which was either a garderobe of a wardrobe.

In the floor of the cupboard is a trap-door concealing the hiding place below, some 4ft 6in by 5ft and only 4ft high, a cramped space in which Charles, who is believed to have been ‘over two yards high’, spent an uncomfortable time when Parliamentarian soldiers came to the house. Whitgreave tells us that, after being presented to the King in his room, Charles asked him ‘where is the secret place my lord [Wilmot] tells me of?’ On being shown the hide, he entered it ‘and when came forth, said itt was the best place hee was ever in’.*

Having devised a practical plan of escape Charles left the house two days later.

As well as a priest hole the house had a chapel in one of the upper rooms of the house.

John Huddleston took the King up to see the Chapel during his stay at Moseley. Charles described it as a ‘very decent place’ and told Huddleston that if he ever regained his throne, Catholics would no longer have to worship in secret. Charles married a Catholic, but as part of his efforts to reconcile the anti-Catholic majority, professed a moderate Anglican faith, unlike his openly Catholic brother, James, who was driven from the throne in 1688 because of his religion.

The Chapel, or more properly the Oratory, did not look as it does now when Charles saw it in 1651. The roof was open to the rafters, and is said by tradition to have once contained a secret hiding place, although there is no evidence of it. The barrel-vaulted ceiling was added following the Relieving act of 1791, which allowed Catholics greater freedom of worship.*

*From the National Trust guide book to Moseley Old Hall 1997 revised 2000. The photo of the priest hole was also taken from the same guide book (all other photos are my own as usual).