Secret Room In N.Z. House

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 16, Issue 30, 8 December 1950, Page 6

Secret Room In N.Z. House

It is not often that a house in New Zealand reveals a concealed room and a tunnel as is the case at New Plymouth. Maybe this is due to the fact that we have never suffered revolution or civil war, and being an island community the risk of invasion is small. Our houses thus all look very much alike and are built more or less to accepted designs. In London a house standing in an old square was pulled down some years ago. On the second floor the house-breakers found an air shaft. This led downward to a small chamber concealed behind the panelled wall of a room. The hidden room contained a library and an old hair-covered travelling trunk. This contained what must have once been most incriminating evidence regarding certain supporters of the Jacobite movement. The cell had been used to conceal Jacobite agents before and after the rebellion. In another case when a house in Gray’s Inn Road, London, Was pulled down the proverbial skeleton in a cupboard was discovered, concealed by numerous layers of wallpaper. Injuries to the skull suggested an untimely end, but after elaborate investigations no clue could be found. The truth was that there were no clues —the skeleton in the cupboard had belonged to a well-known medical man who had once lived in the house. 'He had put his anatomical specimen in the cupboard.. The new tenant had repapered the room, cupboard and all.