Huddington Court
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Huddington Court is a 15th Century manor house in Worcestershire, England, six miles east of Worcester. It is surrounded by a moat with a bridge and is painted white on the outside with prominent black beams on all walls. It has been described by Sir Nikolaus Pevsner as 'the most picturesque house in Worcestershire'[1].
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[edit] The Gunpowder Plotters
It is also the house where the plans to blow up Parliament in the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 were conceived. Thomas Wintour (or Winter) and his brother Robert Wintour grew up in the house. There are portraits of Robert Catesby and other plotters around the house, which is a private residence and not open to the public. There are also secret rooms where the plotters could hide if or when the authorities came.
[edit] Secret Rooms & Priest Holes
The first of these rooms is on the ground floor. A floorboard can be removed in what is now the study to reveal a spiral staircase down to a fairly large sized room. The room itself is bare and shabby, but it was only meant for hiding. It was the most easily accessible room, but also the easiest for the authorities to find.
The second secret room is found on the third and top floor. In the furthest room of the house, now a bedroom, a part of the wall can be removed. This part of the wall was originally a set of bricks which came out as a whole, but it is now a plank of wood made to look like the wall behind it. The hole revealed is only just big enough for a man to crawl through, but it was big enough. This room is much more awkward to hide in; there are beams across the middle of the room and it is not very spacious. It would fit about four men, but there is no room to stand and it can get very hot after a while.
The third room, or Priest hole, is the most cleverly situated. To access it, one must first be in the room above. In the wall of that room, there is another disguised panel in the wall which can be removed and replaced once on the other side. This room is about the same size, but with much rougher ground and now unsafe to go into.
[edit] Bolt Hole
After Guy Fawkes was arrested some of the plotters had fled to Huddington Court and were hiding in this third secret room. The authorities came and found the first two rooms, but failed to discover the third. The house today is kept in good condition, although the secret rooms are not in as much use as they were in the 15th Century.
[edit] References
- ^ Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of Worcestershire, p 200, ISBN 0140710353 ,
