Priest’s holes were secret compartments built to hide Catholic priests and their valuables during Elizabethan rule. They were small and had no ventilation or toilet facilities, and were hidden cleverly to avoid detection. Nicholas Owen was a skilled builder of priest holes.
A priest’s hole is a secret compartment designed to house one or more people, along with a few items. The priests’ dens were originally built to protect Catholic priests from Elizabethan rule, and were later used to hide valuables and to hide an assortment of radicals and dissenters. Such holes are generally very small, as visitors to Elizabethan manors can attest, and were designed for temporary concealment only, with no method of obtaining fresh air, and no toilet facilities.
While houses undoubtedly had various hidden compartments before Elizabeth I came to power, the priest’s hole flourished under her reign. While the Queen was generally lenient in the early years of her reign, she severely cracked down on Catholics thereafter, considering them a threat to the security of the state. Catholics were not allowed to go to mass or participate in religious ceremonies, and were expected to convert or be very stealthy in exercising their Catholic faith.
Numerous Catholic priests and other church officials continued to travel throughout England during the Elizabethan era, determined to bring church sacraments to those who wanted them. They did so at great peril, however, because if they were caught, they could be severely punished. As a result, the priest’s hole was born; when a party of officials descended on an estate or house to look for a Catholic priest, the priest could hide in the priest’s den until they were gone.
Many people were well aware of the tactic of using a priest hole, and it was common for search parties to bring workmen along to destroy homes as they searched them, looking for signs of a priest hole. Consequently, these compartments had to be hidden very cleverly and built in secret, so that no one would know whether or not a house had a hole for the priest. At times, the priests were forced to go into silent hiding for days before the search party gave up.
A notable builder of priest-holes was Nicholas Owen, a Jesuit who built a large number of such compartments, some of which can still be seen today. He was very skilled at hiding his priest holes in unexpected places, causing search parties to ignore the location of a terrified priest’s hiding place.
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