Gloucester Prison

The gaol was designed by William Blackburn and opened in 1792 on the site of Gloucester Castle, the keep of which had previously been pressed into use as a prison. In 1840 it was substantially rebuilt by Thomas Fuljames, who added the flanking brick wings that still define its shape. A young offenders wing followed in 1971, and in 1987 the prison gained a new gate, administration block and visits centre.

The twentieth and twenty-first centuries brought both hardship and genuine invention. In April 2003, the day after Gloucester was named among Britain's most overcrowded jails, two prisoners barricaded themselves in a cell in protest over visiting rights, in a siege lasting three and a half hours. Yet in February 2006 the prison launched a Time Bank scheme in which inmates restored bicycles in the workshop and banked that time for their families to draw on as help from community volunteers — a scheme that ran until the very end. An inspection in August 2007 called the organised activities for inmates "woeful", while describing the prison overall as "very positive" thanks to good management.

Closure was announced by Justice Secretary Chris Grayling on 10 January 2013, Gloucester being one of seven English prisons to go, and the gates shut that March. The site was put up for sale, attracting interest from the Malmaison hotel chain and a rival proposal for a prison museum with ghost tours; in December 2014 it was announced that the site had been sold, alongside Dorchester, Kingston and Shepton Mallet, to City and Country. Among its notable former inmates were the solicitor Herbert Rowse Armstrong, hanged in 1922; Stefan Kiszko, wrongly convicted of murder; the soldier Peter McAleese; Arthur Griffith, former President of Dáil Éireann; and the Irish revolutionary Pierce McCan, who died in the prison in 1919.

The former gaol has opened its doors to the public before: from April 2017 to October 2018 it ran under the Jailhouse Tours brand while planning permission for the wider redevelopment was finalised, and the site has since been earmarked for a mixed-use scheme of assisted living units alongside retail and social amenities, subject to community consultation. Access therefore depends entirely on what is scheduled at the time, so check before you travel rather than turning up at the gate.

Organised public ghost hunts are held at the venue by event companies, and booking one is the most straightforward way inside. It is worth going with the understanding that this was a working prison until 2013, and the burial place of men executed within its walls — the exercise yard, where the remains of a large Norman castle wall were uncovered in December 2015, is older ground still.