. More famous homes of Great Britain and their stories . e con-taining wall became ruinous, and an accident chanced to revealit. Besides the entrance up in the chimney, the back of the openhearth was made to be removable and again replaceable, in casea few kegs needed to be stored away hastily. And the onlyobjection one saw to the place, as a refuge, was the fact that itmust have been most uncomfortably warm when the adjacentoven was in full heat. The secret place at Cotehele was not at the side of, butrather above, the great oven. It was discovered and openedsome years ago, and nothing but a
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. More famous homes of Great Britain and their stories . e con-taining wall became ruinous, and an accident chanced to revealit. Besides the entrance up in the chimney, the back of the openhearth was made to be removable and again replaceable, in casea few kegs needed to be stored away hastily. And the onlyobjection one saw to the place, as a refuge, was the fact that itmust have been most uncomfortably warm when the adjacentoven was in full heat. The secret place at Cotehele was not at the side of, butrather above, the great oven. It was discovered and openedsome years ago, and nothing but a bridle was found in it; butthen someone else had been there before, and that someone isbelieved to have been a mason, working about the house, whoupon his death left his daughter an unusually large sum ofmoney, of which no account was forthcoming. Tradition alwaysaffirmed that treasure was hidden somewhere here, though tradi-tion is usually worth nothing in such cases ; but a letter wasactually inserted in the false bottom of a chest in 1618, and found. S7 ss Cotebele and recorded in 1640, referring definitely to strong chests andhidden secrets and enemies ; and it is very probable that somepart of those hidden secrets was deposited in the usual place —that is to say, the receptacle close to the kitchen oven—and alsofound its way out from thence, through the hands of the aforemen-tioned mason or some previous rogue. For there are extant severalbills for silver plate, purchased about the time of Charles I. and11. ; and, though both the Sir Richard of that period and his sonPiers suffered for their allegiance, and gave much of their platein their Kings service, or else parted with it to raise their fines, itis hardly likely that all of it was sacrificed except the very smallquantity still in existence. However, by the strangest good luck, that which has escaped all perils includes a piece of plate muchearlier than the Charless days. This is the ancient saltcellar(is it>) :