In the heart of the old Forest of Arden, in Warwickshire, Baddesley Clinton seems asleep on its moat, a grey stone manor left almost unchanged since the Middle Ages. Beneath this apparent peace, the house hides one of the most moving stories of persecuted Catholic England.
A manor out of time
A moated manor of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Baddesley Clinton owes its charm to its modesty: never turned into a great house of state, it has kept its medieval face — inner courtyard, great hall, bridge over the moat. In the time of Elizabeth I it belonged to families who stayed faithful to Catholicism, and became a refuge for the clandestine priests who roamed England at the risk of their lives to keep the old faith. Like other recusant houses, it was fitted with cunningly hidden priest holes.
The night of the seven priests
The most famous episode took place in October 1591. While several Catholic priests, among them Jesuits, were gathered in secret at Baddesley Clinton, the Crown's agents (the pursuivants) burst in at dawn to search the house. The priests — seven, it is said — slipped hastily into a hide fitted into the house's old drain, crouching in the damp and the cold for hours, while the search went on above them. They escaped death. The most effective hides of the age, perhaps including this one, were the work of the Jesuit brother Nicholas Owen, a genius of trapdoors and false walls, later captured and tortured to death. Baddesley Clinton keeps the memory of these lives hanging on a wooden panel.
What to see
- The medieval moated manor, inner courtyard and bridge.
- The priest holes, including the one of the night of 1591.
- The great hall and the interiors that have stayed old.
- The peaceful setting of the old Forest of Arden.
Did you know?
The hides that saved the priests of Baddesley Clinton were doubtless designed by Nicholas Owen, a small man of prodigious skill, who spent years secretly digging, alone and by night, dozens of hides in the Catholic houses of England. Captured in 1606, he was tortured so cruelly in the Tower that he died without giving up a single secret. The Catholic Church has since canonised him: the saint of the hides still watches, invisible, over houses like Baddesley Clinton.
Practical information
Baddesley Clinton lies near Warwick, in Warwickshire, in the centre of England. It is today a manor in the care of the National Trust, open to the public with its gardens. Opening hours and days are liable to change; it is best to check them against the official sources before visiting.
Quiz
- What did Baddesley Clinton conceal to protect Catholic priests?
- Priest holes
- An underground passage to the forest
- A secret open-air chapel
- What happened at Baddesley Clinton in 1591?
- Seven priests escaped a search by hiding
- A fire destroyed the manor
- The queen was received there
- Who designed the famous hides of the Catholic houses?
- The Jesuit Nicholas Owen
- Robert Smythson
- Inigo Jones