murder-hole

murder-hole (plural murder-holes)

1. Alternative form of murder hole
   • 1999, David Sweetman, Medieval Castles of Ireland, page 148:

     Immediately inside the doorway is a small lobby which is defended by a cross loop which would have been manned from inside the main chamber and defended by a murder-hole over.

   • 2000, Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments in Wales, An inventory of the ancient monuments in Glamorgan:

     The murder-hole above the outer end of the passage survives, but only the descending grooves mark the position of the outer portcullis within it, beneath the recess to receive it in the outer E. wall

   • 2002, David Freke, E. P. Allison, Excavations on St. Patrick's Isle, Peel, Isle of Man, 1982-88, →ISBN, page 11:

     This corridor is entered from the Castle by a tunnel cut through the rampart, its exit through the wall being guarded by a murder-hole above, and made more secure by a double right-angle bend and a narrow doorway.

   • 2006, Jonathan Stroud, The Last Siege, →ISBN, page 230:

     Marcus caught up another large rock, but before hurling it he paused, squinting eagerly down his murder-hole.

2. A deep pit used for drowning malefactors as a punishment.
   • 1877, Charles Gibbon, In Love and War: A Romance - Volume 1, page 294:

     The pits were of the kind which have become known as murder-holes, for the reason already explained that they were used by the barons, who had power of pit and gallows, to punish malefactors summarily.

   • 1884, Alexander W. M. Clark Kennedy, Robert the Bruce: A Poem, Historical and Romantic, page 222:

     Some of the murder-holes or pits, are said to be eighty feet deep, from which human bones have been brought forth, and their origin has been referred to the feudal grants, which were conferred on so many barons, of having and using " pit and gallows."

   • 2012, Sir Walter Scott, The Border Antiquities of England and Scotland, →ISBN:

     Drowning is a very old mode of punishment in Scotland; and in Galloway there were pits of great depth appropriated to that punishment, still called murder-holes, out of which human bones have occasionally been taken in great quantities.