Do you know the name of the patron saint of illusionists and escapologists?  If not, read on, and all will be revealed!

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At the first talk of the 2024-25 season, Phil Downing, the Manager at Harvington Hall, spoke to members about the Elizabethan house whilst most elegantly attired as a gentleman of the late sixteenth century.

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The Hall, a moated Elizabethan manor house, was built in the 1570s although the site has been inhabited from the 13th century, and the moat dates from about 1270.  The house was only lived in as a family home for about 120 years, being neglected from the end of the 17th century. So it retains many of its original features – the floorboards, for example – as well as the largest collection of Elizabethan wall paintings in the country, and the largest collection of what we know today as priests’ holes.  (Apparently a 16th century priest-hunter would be a bit puzzled by this term; the hiding places he was searching for were known as “conveyances”.)

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Humphrey Pakington, who inherited the Hall in 1578, was a Catholic and a known recusant, that is one who refused to attend the services of the Church of England.  After his death the house was lived in by his widow and various female descendants, until it came into the possession of a great-granddaughter who was married to one of the Throckmortons of Coughton Court. The Throckmortons had no use for the Hall; indeed in the late 1600s they demolished the grander part of the house, leaving the remnant we can see today.  Nowadays there is only one original piece of furniture to have survived at the Hall – a bench, found in the moat where the silt preserved it.  It can be seen in the Great Room.

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Harvington Hall is most famous of course for its priests’ holes.  Phil showed us some examples, in a couple of which he has actually spent some time (once 36 hours) for charity. Some of them are very ingenious and thought to be the work of the Jesuit lay-brother Nicholas Owen.  Owen was eventually captured at Hindlip Hall in early 1606 and died under torture at the Tower of London, without however revealing the locations of his hiding places or the names of any priests.  He was canonised in 1970 and is regarded as the patron saint of illusionists and escapologists. So now you know!

 

No one is ever recorded as having been discovered and captured at the Hall, either because it was never subject to a serious search, or because the hiding places were too cunningly hidden.

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This was a fascinating talk. Many in the audience had already visited the Hall, but Phil inspired most of us to pay either a first or a return visit.