THE SAXON SANCTUARY

DONALD GRAHAM 1999

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A tunnel runs from the cellars of the Hall under the park meadow towards the modern road for about 100 yards. Lined with brick and partly paved, it measures some 5 ft high by 2 ft wide; it then shrinks to a height of 3 ft and divides in two directions, one heading curiously straight for the church. Some imagine it was an escapeway for Jesuit priests fleeing arrest but its original purpose was probably very mundane. The Smith-Caringtons built their

Hall on the site of the old miller’s cottage, a position exposed to the river Alne’s famous floods. The tunnel may simply have been a useful flood drain running down to the ford, and bricked up as a culvert for effect. The modern village is still sorely in need of such anti-flood features! So while body snatchers from the Hall smuggling corpses from the churchyard or Jesuits making good an escape cannot be ruled out, we may doubt it

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