As I have shown, it may pretty safely be assumed that he was at Gothurst early in October 1605, just after Sir Everard Digby had been initiated into the plot; and, as the hiding-places at Gothurst about to be described are believed to have been made between his initiation and the discovery, with a view to concealment in connection with the gunpowder plot, the work must in that case have been done during October. [Illustration: GOTHURST _The mark * shows the position of the secret room_ _Dawsors Ph Sc_] Lipscomb thus describes them:--[209] "In one of the apartments was formerly shewn a movable floor, which, to ordinary observers, offered nothing remarkable in its appearance, but was made to revolve on a pivot, which, by a secret bolt, disclosed underneath it another room (receiving light from the lower part of a mullioned window, not discoverable exteriorily, unless at a very great distance)." From this secret room, he says "there were private passages of ingress and egress," "almost impossible of detection, even by the occupiers of the Mansion. Here were also some remarkably ingenious cabinets and drawers, for the deposit of papers, &c." Mr Walter Carlile, the son of the owner, and the occupier of Gothurst, or Gayhurst, as it is now called, informs me that Lipscomb's description of the secret room is perfectly correct; that, although it was demolished twenty years ago, greatly to his own regret, there are still all the traces of where it was and how it was managed; and that the "priest's hole" and some secret passages are yet in existence. [209] _Hist. and Antiquities of the Co. of Bucks_, Vol. iv. p. 159. The secret room was not in the principal front, with its picturesque porch and gables; but at the end, at the right; that is to say, on the right as one stood facing the front. In the middle of this end of the house was a solid, square-headed projection, and it was the upper half of the room on the first floor of this projection which was converted into the secret room. The result was that, in this secret chamber the window came down to the floor, but did not rise to the top of the room, being in fact the upper half of the window which lighted the room beneath it. As the entire window was almost twice as high as it was broad, and divided into two equal parts, it was very well adapted for the purpose.