Priest hole

A priest hole is a hiding place for a priest built in England or Wales during the period when Catholics were persecuted by law. Following the accession of Queen Elizabeth I to the throne in 1558, there were several Catholic plots designed to remove her, and severe measures, including torture and execution, were taken against Catholic priests. From the mid-1570s, hides were built into houses to conceal priests from priest hunters. Most of the hides that survive today are in country manor houses, but there is much documentary evidence, for example in the Autobiography and Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot of John Gerard, of hides in towns and cities, especially in London.

The two best-known hide builders are Jesuit lay brother Nicholas Owen, who worked in the South and the Midlands,^: 182 and Jesuit priest Richard Holtby, who worked in the North. After the Gunpowder Plot, Owen was captured, taken to the Tower of London, and tortured to death on the rack. He was canonised as a martyr by Pope Paul VI in 1970. Holtby was never arrested, and he died peacefully in 1640.

Priest Holes are a device used occasionally by authors of British mysteries to explain how a character disappears or appears. Karen A Romano identifies three occurrences in British TV series—‘’Lovejoy'', “The Judas Pair” 1986; ''Father Brown, “ 'The Ghost in the Machine” 2014; and ‘’Timeless’’, 'Party at Castle Vallarta” 2018.Karen A. Romano, “Things I Learned from TV: ‘Priest Holes’ in Lovejoy, Father Brown, and Timeless,” “Small Screen Pop: Retro TV and Culture” May 16, 2019, accessed June12, 2025, https://smallscreenpop.blogspot.com/2019/05/things-i-learned-from-tv-priest-holes.html