Nicholas Owen, beatified by Pius XI in 1929, with 135 other martyrs of the English Reformation, was canonised by Paul VI in 1970, as one of the ‘Forty Martyrs’, who represent the much larger number of English Reformation martyrs, many of whom were not fully identified.

Owen was born in Oxford in 1563, the son of a carpenter. He was known affectionately as ‘Little John’. While two of his brothers went abroad to study for the priesthood, Nicholas was apprenticed to an Oxford joiner. Around 1587, he joined Henry Garnet, the Jesuit superior, as his servant, later entering the Society of Jesus as a lay brother. In the guise of a servant, Owen’s uniquely dangerous and invaluable vocation was to apply his carpentry skills to the construction of hiding places for priests.

Owen’s unique legacy was the remarkable number of priest hides that he built in gentry houses, mainly in the Midlands and South of England. The detail of his life is less well known than some of his contemporaries, but he was a constant presence in the mission from the time he met Garnet, to whom he remained steadfastly attached, until their discovery and arrest in 1606, after the Gunpowder Plot. He was formally admitted as a Jesuit lay brother around 1600. It is no exaggeration to say, in the words of Michael Hodgetts, that the survival of Catholicism during the worst of the persecution was largely due to Nicholas Owen, ‘the master builder of priest hides’.

Nicholas Owen’s hides became increasingly inventive and cleverly sited, to escape detection. Many hides did not survive for long after the height of the persecution, and Owen’s work cannot always be identified, but in the Midland counties, he certainly built the hides at Harvington Hall, Baddesley Clinton and Hindlip Hall. Documentary and architectural evidence makes it possible to identify the characteristics of his work: a liking for sites away from outside walls; an ability to think in three dimensions and in curves; and the inventiveness noted by John Gerard to an extent greater than other builders.

The dramatic climax to his life came in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot. He and Henry Garnet moved to Hindlip House in Worcestershire in December 1605, which contained at least eleven hiding places, some being Owen’s own work. The search for the Jesuits hidden at Hindlip began on 20 January 1606 and lasted for twelve days, the longest on record. Nicholas Owen’s identity and significance were known to the authorities, and he was regarded as the great prize – Robert Cecil reportedly exulted ‘Is he taken that knows all the secret places? I am very glad of that’.

​At first, he was detained in the Marshalsea, but later transferred to the Tower of London where he was brutally tortured for several days. He divulged nothing, and died under torture on 2 March 1606. Because of the brutal circumstances of his death the government invented a story that he died by his own hand filled with remorse for his crimes. He was buried within the Tower; the authorities being keen to avoid too many eye witnesses to the way he had been mutilated.

St Nicholas's memorial is kept on the 23rd January.

Father,
your holy martyr, Nicholas Owen
served your Church through a life of labour and skill.
But his greatest task was to give up his life
for the sake of others.
May this example strengthen our resolve to serve you.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.

• The Archdiocese of Birmingham owns Harvington Hall, one of the best preserved Catholic Houses in the Midlands - and home to some of Nicholas Owen's most ingenious 'priest-holes'. It welcomes visitors and pilgrims.
• The late Michael Hodgetts was the recognised expert on priest-holes. His seminal work, 'Secret Hiding Places' has recently been republished. It details hides at the "Famous Five" houses in the Midlands (Boscobel, Moseley, Harvington, Coughton and Baddesley) as well as - amongst many other places - Huddington Court, (home of Gunpower plotters Thomas and Robert Wintour), Braddocks (where Fr John Gerard spent four days in a hide), Sawston Hall (usually considered to be the finest hide in existence) and Burghwallis Hall, where an astonishing hide in plain sight went undiscovered for over 250 years. These four houses – and many others – are private residences where the hides cannot be seen by the public. 
  
  The book also includes 'The Layout of Elizabethan Recusant Houses' which describes how the risks and practicalities of priest-harbouring were managed alongside the many other functions of a country house and 'The Elizabethan Catholic Underground' which gives an account of how priests were smuggled into England and transported to their places of work.
• An account of the ministry of St Nicholas, and of his arrest and martyrdom is contained within 'Father Gerard's Narraitve of the Gunpowder Plot', which can be read here for free - and has also been published by Quanta Cura Press.

Photographs (c) 2018, 2025, Allen Morris.

Memorial to St Nicholas Owen in St Mary's church, Harvington

Entrance to the Great Hide at Baddesley Clinton, created by St Nicholas Owen

The torture of Saint Nicholas Owen, S.J. an engraving by Melchior Küsel (17th century)