Shrewsbury Prison

There has been a prison on this site since 1793, when Thomas Telford built the original to plans by the Shrewsbury architect John Hiram Haycock. The present buildings date from 1877, and the prison held female convicts until 1922. Chaplains came and went, among them Samuel Webster Allen, Roman Catholic chaplain for twenty years before becoming Bishop of Shrewsbury in 1897, and the former Wales rugby international John Strand-Jones, part-time Church of England chaplain from 1930 to 1934.

Between 1902 and 1961, seven men were hanged within these walls for murder — the first two in a brick shed at the rear of the prison, the later five in an execution suite built into existing rooms at the front of the site. They were Richard Wigley, William Griffiths, Frank Griffin, Harry Huxley, Donald Neil Simon, Desmond Donald Hooper and George Riley, the last only twenty-one. In almost every case the person they killed was a woman, and their names belong here too: Mary Ellen Bowen, Catherine Hughes, Jane Edge, Ada Royce, Eunice Simon and Victor Brades, Betty Smith and Adeline Mary Smith. Executions took place at eight in the morning. The four during the 1950s were carried out by Albert Pierrepoint; the last, in 1961, by Harry Allen. All of those executed were buried in unmarked graves within the prison, as was then customary. In 1972 the remains of ten executed prisoners were exhumed; nine were cremated locally and their ashes scattered there, while one body was returned to relatives.

Later decades brought a different kind of hardship. In September 2004, after three inmates hanged themselves within a fortnight, the MP George Stevenson called for an enquiry into suicides at the prison. A 2005 report named Shrewsbury the most overcrowded prison in England and Wales; by 2008 it held 326 men in 178 places, and a 2012 Prison Reform Trust report found it second only to HM Prison Kennet. Closure was announced in January 2013, the last prisoners transferred that February. The Grade II listed site passed to developers, and in September 2020 was bought by The Campbell Group — now the Cove Group — who run it as a visitor attraction.

Shrewsbury Prison is open to the public and sits a short walk from Shrewsbury railway station — the pedestrian route over the footbridge brings you out near the front of the prison, with Howard Street leading up to the gate. The Cove Group runs guided daytime tours across the four-acre site, and for those who want the place after hours there are ghost tours, along with organised public ghost hunts held here by event companies. Booking ahead is sensible, and comfortable shoes are worth packing: this is a Victorian prison building, with stairs between the landings and the Georgian remains below.

Do go with the history in mind. Real people died here — seven of them hanged at eight in the morning, others by their own hand in the overcrowded years before closure. The prison's owners have described plans for a hotel and spa within the grounds, so it is worth checking the current arrangements before you travel; the site has been changing steadily since it reopened.