This innocent looking triangular panel is the entrance to another hide on the top, attic, corridor of the house. It is a tight fit and, as a pivoting entrance panel, well insulated with wooden boarding on the inside. However, once open the skill of its design and making is revealed.
Although you would have to climb into the hide, the space within, next to the chimney stack, is very amenable. You can just make out in the above photo the bolt for locking the panel from within, together with a (now broken) spring mechanism for releasing the bolt from without. This hide was infact, opened from the adjoining room; all that now remains of the discrete opening 'handle' is a small round depression in the adjoining door lintel, which would have held the release pin. A further spring mechanism was built into the hide so that once the entrance was unlocked from the next door room, the panel itself would be pushed open to enable access to this hide. The remains of this spring mechanism can just be seen in the photo below.
All this was done, and lives risked, by many who fought for freedom of worship when, four hundred years ago, the English tried to suppress the Mass.
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