short flight
of steps led from it to another door of stout oak, which opened
by a secret spring, and led to an unknown chamber on the ground
level. Local tradition says this was the favourite haunt of a
certain "wicked Lady Ferrers," who, disguised in male attire,
robbed travellers upon the highway, and being wounded in one
of these exploits, was discovered lying dead outside the walls
of the house; and the malignant nature of this lady's spectre
is said to have had so firm a hold upon the villagers that no
local labourer could be induced to work upon that particular
part of the building.

Beare Park, near Middleham, Yorkshire, had a hiding-hole entered
from the kitchen chimney, as had also the Rookery Farm, near
Cromer; West Coker Manor House; and The Chantry, at Ilminster,
both in Somerset. At the last named, in another hiding-place in
the room above, a bracket or credence-table was found, which
is still preserved.

Many weird stories are told about Bovey House, South Devon, situated
near the once notorious smuggling villages of Beer and Branscombe.
Upon removing some leads of the roof a secret room was found,
furnished with a chair and table. The well here is remarkable,
and similar to that at Carisbrooke, with the exception that two
people take the place of the donkey! Thirty feet below the ground
level there is said to have been a hiding-place--a large cavity
cut in the solid rock. Many years ago a skeleton of a man was
found at the bottom. Such dramatic material should suggest to some
sensational novelist a tragic story, as the well and lime-walk at
Ingatestone is said to have suggested _Lady Audley's Secret_.

A hiding-place something after the same style existed in the now
demolished manor house of Besils Leigh, Berks. Down the shaft
of a chimney a cavity was scooped out of the brickwork, to which
a refugee had to be lowered by a rope. One of the towers of the
west gate of Bodiam Castle contains a narrow square well in the
wall leading to the ground level, and, as the guide was wont
to remark, "how much farther the Lord only knows"! This sort
of thing may also be seen at Mancetter Manor, Warwickshire, and
Ightham Moat, Kent, both approached by a staircase.

A communication formerly ran from a secret chamber in the
oak-panelled dining-room of Birtsmorton Court, Worcestershire,
to a passage beneath the moat that surrounds the structure, and
thence to an exit on the other side of the water. During the Wars