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Secret Chambers and Hiding Places - Historic, Romantic, & Legendary Stories & Traditions About - Hiding-Holes, Secret Chambers, Etc. by Allan Fea
page 71 of 142 (50%)
It is well known that the huge, carved oak bedsteads of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries were often provided with secret
accommodation for valuables. One particular instance we can call
to mind of a hidden cupboard at the base of the bedpost which
contained a short rapier. But of these small hiding-places we
shall speak presently. It is with the head of the bed we have
now to do, as it was sometimes used as an opening into the wall
at the back. Occasionally, in old houses, unmeaning gaps and
spaces are met with in the upper rooms midway between floor and
ceiling, which possibly at one time were used as bed-head
hiding-places. Shipton Court, Oxon, and Hill Hall, Essex, may
be given as examples. Dunster Castle, Somersetshire, also, has
at the back of a bedstead in one of the rooms a long, narrow
place of concealment, extending the width of the apartment, and
provided with a stone seat.

Sir Ralph Verney, while in exile in France in 1645, wrote to his
brother at Claydon House, Buckinghamshire, concerning "the odd
things in the room my mother kept herself--_the iron chest in
the little room between her bed's-head and the back stairs._"
This old seat of the Verneys had another secret chamber in the
middle storey, entered through a trap-door in "the muniment-room"
at the top of the house. Here also was a small private staircase
in the wall, possibly the "back stairs" mentioned in Sir Ralph's
letters.[1]

[Footnote 1: See _Memoirs of the Verney Family._]

[Illustration: SHIPTON COURT, OXFORDSHIRE]

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