Month: July 2024

The setting in Identical.

The principle setting for Identical is a rambling, gothic, stately home in the Lake District, with a priest hole in the attic. I imagined the place to be an austere red brick building that would have been constructed in the Elizabethan era around a much older and smaller house. It would have battlements, wings, and a flight of stone steps leading to a huge front door, guarded by a pair of stone lions. I saw it surrounded by gardens that have become an overgrown wilderness from lack of tending, and there’s a fathomless, icy tarn gleaming at the foot of the garden, where my characters swim, despite being banned from doing so by their father. From the top windows of the house, the view would be of wild hills with craggy peaks in the distance.

In the story, the family has long run out of money, is in terrible debt and has sold off much of the land, and all the valuable paintings and furniture. The house is falling to pieces, mouldering, mouse-infested, riddled with wood rot and stinking of damp from a leaking roof and faulty plumbing. Not a comfortable place to live!

While I was looking for inspiration, I researched large houses in the Lake District and northern England. These places have now often been taken over by the National Trust and are open to the public, thereby avoiding the fate of my fictional Hawksmoor, where the owner refuses the idea of turning the family home into entertainment for the public.

Some of the great houses that came closest to my imagined house were Burton Agnes Hall in Yorkshire https://www.burtonagnes.com/

and Muncaster Castle in the Lake District https://www.visitlakedistrict.com/things-to-do/muncaster-castle-p1211021 The later has the exact background that I’d imagined, with vast hills and beyond that, craggy peaks. I was also fascinated by Harvington Hall. https://www.historichouses.org/house/harvington-hall/visit/ Although not in the right place geographically, it is a grand Catholic house with a fascinating history. And with seven hiding places, it has the most priest holes ever found in one house.

Inspiration behind IDENTICAL

The central setting in Identical is a dilapidated stately home that has been owned by the same Catholic family for generations. The house has a secret priest hole in the attic; a musty, dank space accessed by a swinging beam. This is a place of punishment and terror for the protagonists, Cecily and Alice. But during the sixteenth century, when it was illegal for a Jesuit priest to set foot in England, these cunning hiding places saved many lives.

While I was doing my research for Identical, I became fascinated by the history of priest holes; and as someone who suffers from claustrophobia, I was also horrified by the idea of being shut in one. During the reign of Elizabeth I, a group of men, often led by the local Justice of the peace, would target Catholic houses suspected of harbouring a priest. They arrived with a warrant allowing them to search the house for any fugitives. If any priest or monk was found on the property, the owner would forfeit their home and land, and sometimes their life.

To try and keep their priests safe, wealthy Catholics came up with ingenious ways of concealing them. Priest holes, also known as priest hides, were secret places of concealment built within large houses. These tiny spaces were often made above fireplaces, in cellars, behind staircases or in attics. Inside them, conditions were cramped and dark – and usually boiling in summer and freezing in winter. Some priest holes were as small as 2’7” by 3’9” (like one at Harvington Hall in Worcestershire). The fugitive would have limited food and drink and no sanitation, and they would be forced to remain there for as long as the priest hunters stayed in the house. This could be days, or even weeks. The hunters were always determined to catch their priest. They measured the footprint of the house inside and out and checked to see if they tallied. They tapped on walls to see if they were hollow, pulled up floorboards and stripped back panelling, alert for any sound the priest might inadvertently make.

It must have been terrifying for the hunted priest, and for the family hiding him. If caught, the priest would be imprisoned, tortured, and killed. Some died in the hole, from lack of oxygen or starvation. Sometimes this was because the family had been arrested and taken away – and if, as often happened, the priest hole only opened from the outside, the occupant was effectively sealed up in their own coffin.