Baddesley Clinton

When Nicholas Brome died in 1517, the house passed to his daughter, who in 1500 had married Sir Edward Ferrers, Sheriff of Warwickshire.

[3] Henry Ferrers (1549–1633), "The Antiquary", believed to have built the great hall, made many additions to Baddesley Clinton, including starting the tradition of installing stained glass to represent the family's coat of arms.

The house was inhabited in the 1860s by the novelists Georgiana Chatterton and her second husband Edward Heneage Dering, who both converted to Roman Catholicism.

They sheltered Catholic priests, who were under threat of a death sentence if discovered, and made special arrangements to hide and protect them.

Fugitives were able to slide down a rope from the first floor through the old garderobe shaft into the house's sewers, which run the length of the building, which could hold six or seven people with their clothes and the equipment required for a Mass.

These priest holes are said to have been built by Saint Nicholas Owen, a lay-brother of the Jesuits who constructed many masterful hides, notably at nearby Harvington Hall.

[6] In 1986 a number of exterior and interior shots of Baddesley Clinton were used by Granada Television for its Sherlock Holmes series in the episode "The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual".