Secret Passages and Priest Holes
The secret passage is one of the most durable themes in castle mythology, and one of the most misrepresented. The medieval castle's architecture created spaces that appear hidden — wall passages, service corridors, narrow stairs within the thickness of the wall — but which were not secret to their users; they were normal infrastructure. The genuinely hidden spaces in historic castles are rarer than tradition suggests, more recent in date, and have a specific historical context that is more interesting than the general mythology. The buildings discussed here are on the map.
Mural Passages and Wall Galleries
Many medieval castle walls, particularly those of the 13th-14th century, contain passages within their thickness. These wall galleries served practical functions: they allowed access to arrow loops without exposing the defender to the open wall-walk; they provided private circulation between rooms that avoided the public spaces of the great hall; and they housed the garderobes (latrines), typically positioned to drain down the exterior face of the wall.
The passage within the walls of Conway Castle, for example, connects the upper ward's private apartments to the king's chamber without requiring the occupants to cross the great hall. It was not hidden from the household — the servants who used it knew of its existence — but it was private, in the medieval sense of belonging to the lord's personal service rather than to the general household.
Priest Holes
The genuinely hidden concealed spaces in English houses are the priest holes of the Elizabethan period, and they have a precise historical context. After the Elizabethan Religious Settlement of 1559, the practice of Catholicism in England was progressively criminalised. The Recusancy Acts imposed fines on those who did not attend Church of England services; later legislation made it a capital offence to harbour a Catholic priest. In response, the network of Catholic gentry families who remained loyal to Rome developed a practice of concealing priests in their houses.
The designer of most of the documented priest holes is Nicholas Owen, a Jesuit lay brother who was himself martyred in 1606 and canonised in 1970. Owen specialised in creating hiding places of extraordinary concealment within existing buildings: false walls that matched the adjacent plasterwork exactly, spaces accessible only through concealed trap doors in floors or behind movable fixtures.
Harvington Hall in Worcestershire retains more documented priest holes than any other English house: seven, of various types, incorporated into the fabric at various points in the 1580s-1590s. The most elaborate — a concealed room above the great staircase accessible only through a trap door in the floor of an adjacent room — is so well integrated into the building's fabric that it was not rediscovered until the 20th century. Sawston Hall in Cambridgeshire and Baddesley Clinton in Warwickshire have similar documented examples.
Predjama Castle's Cave Passage
The most famous documented medieval escape passage is at Predjama Castle in Slovenia. The castle, built into the mouth of a cliff-face cave near Postojna, is connected to a cave system that extends deep into the limestone massif behind it. During the siege of 1483-84 by Habsburg forces against the knight Erasmus of Lueg, the cave passage allowed the castle to receive supplies from outside the besieging forces. The Slovene chronicle records that Erasmus reportedly sent cherries to the besiegers to demonstrate that his supplies were fresh. The passage is accessible in the cave tour that accompanies castle visits.
The Tunnels of Edinburgh Castle
Edinburgh Castle has a documented tunnel system beneath the rock, created in various periods for different purposes. The Vaults — medieval storage chambers cut into the rock beneath the main buildings — were used as French and American prisoner-of-war accommodation in the 18th century. A separate passage, which may have been a sally port for the garrison, runs to the north face of the rock. The tunnel system was expanded during the Second World War for communications and emergency access.
The story of the piper who disappeared while exploring the tunnel system in the 17th century is a castle ghost narrative rather than a documented historical event; but the existence of the tunnels themselves is documented.
The Difference Between Hidden and Private
The conceptual distinction that resolves most of the confusion around castle secret passages: hidden and private are not the same thing. Medieval castle architecture created many private spaces — accessible to specific people, unknown to the general household — but deliberately concealed spaces are rare before the 16th century. The motivation for genuine concealment — hiding a person or object from active and hostile search — is a product of specific political circumstances that the medieval feudal castle, as a space of acknowledged power, did not typically generate.
The priest hole tradition is directly traceable to the specific circumstances of the Elizabethan Catholic persecution. Where similar persecutions occurred in other countries and periods, similar architectural responses appear. The hidden rooms in Dutch houses used to conceal Jewish families during the Second World War are the same impulse in a different political context.
Explore on the map
Harvington Hall, Baddesley Clinton, Predjama Castle, and the other buildings discussed here are plotted on the interactive map. A tour of the priest-hole houses of the English Midlands can be combined with the broader Elizabethan and Jacobean castle landscape of the region.