Being ‘banged-up’ in Durham – never a pleasant experience
12:18pm Friday 25th July 2008
A VISIT or stay in Durham is often a pleasant experience, whether you are a tourist attracted to the cathedral or a student at Durham University.
However, for some, being "in Durham" is an altogether different experience, and one in which they have very little choice.
I am of course referring to the inmates of Durham Prison.
There has been a prison of one form or another in Durham since medieval times.
It is known, for example, that a prison cell was attached to Durham Cathedral in the area of the cloisters.
Later, from about 1417, Durham Prison occupied the Great North Gate, an impressive arched gateway that formed part of the city walls.
The gateway straddled Saddler Street at its junction with the North Bailey and Owengate.
A gate had probably stood here since the 1070s.
Cardinal Thomas Langley, the Bishop of Durham, replaced the old gate with a more solid building in 1417, and the new gate would serve as Durham Jail for 400 years.
From about 1632 the jail was interlinked with a House of Correction that occupied the lower part of an old chapel on the western end of Elvet Bridge.
Some offenders were imprisoned beneath this bridge, underneath the old chapel.
They included the notorious gipsy piper and livestock thief Jimmy Allan, who died there in 1810. His ghost is said to haunt the cell that can still be seen beneath the bridge that was later converted into a bar that bears his name.
Conditions in the early jails were appalling.
As early as 1774, some individuals were beginning to question the treatment of prisoners.
In that year a prison reformer called John Howard visited Durham Jail and its associated cells.
In a report, Howard noted that: "The men are put at night into dungeons, one seven feet square for three prisoners - another, the Great Hole, has only a little window.
In this I saw six prisoners, most of them transports chained to the floor.
"In that situation they had been for many weeks and were very sick."
In 1808 a Justice of the Assize called Sir George Wood Knight instructed a grand jury to consider the existing site and condition of the prison.
The jury concluded that the jail, House of Correction and associated courts were "insecure, unwholesome, inconvenient and wholly inadequate".
On top of it all, the narrow entrance of the Great North Gate presented a major traffic hazard for travellers making their way up and down the Bailey towards the cathedral.
Things were pushed into motion by the then Bishop of Durham, Shute Barrington, who promised to donate £2,000 towards a new prison, providing that it was commenced before April 1810.
By 1809, Parliament empowered local magistrates to erect suitable new buildings.
The site chosen was a field at the head of Old Elvet. Described as a dry, healthy spot, it was purchased by the Rev John Fawcett, one of the men entrusted with the prison's development.
Francis Sandys, architect of the new jail at Gloucester, was appointed to the task of building both court and jail.
On July 31, 1809, Sir Henry Vane Tempest laid the foundation stone in the presence of several local dignitaries, including Ralph John Lambton, Shute Barrington and officers and brethren of the Provincial Grand Lodge of Freemasons.
Unfortunately, as Mr Sandys' work commenced, it was heavily criticised and deemed insecure.
He was dismissed from the job, although according to the Durham historian Surtees, he had successfully completed the court.
The prison was a different matter. A new architect called Moneypenny was appointed.
Mr Moneypenny seems to have encountered difficulties, partly due to escalating costs caused by having to remove and work around the efforts of Mr Sandys.
Like Sandys, Moneypenny was dismissed but refused to lay the matter to rest.
In a series of newspaper articles and circular letters, he attacked Sandys' professional character.
Sandys subsequently sued Moneypenny for libel and for his efforts a court awarded him £100 of Moneypenny's money.
Meanwhile, Ignatius Bonomi, a Durham architect of Italian parentage, was given the job.
He supervised the project very closely but with less attention to ornate detail than that envisaged by Sandys.
Bonomi's work met with general satisfaction, except no doubt among the future inmates who would come to reside there.
The new court had opened in August 1811 but prisoners were not removed to the completed jail until the August of 1819.
Sadly, Durham's old prison, The Great North Gate, was demolished the following year.
It had been one of the most impressive medieval buildings in the city.
The cost for building the new prison, including the demolition of Sandys' work, caused outrage throughout the County of Durham. A cost of £134,684, 15s and 5d would be met through the county rate tax.
This was a phenomenal amount of money in those days and attempts were made to resist the payment.
A meeting of landowners and land occupiers was held at the King's Head in Darlington on June 7 1813 and a circular letter was posted, pleading with people not to pay the tax "until an opinion of counsel can be obtained on the legality of this rate, by which an enormous sum of money will be raised for purposes, in the judgement of the meeting not within the intent of letter of the act of building the jail".
However, the protests had little success. The prison, and the tax, were there to stay.
Of course, the costs of the building meant very little to the inmates who arrived at their new home in August 1819.
For most, their only concern was to leave the prison as soon as they could. Some would leave as reformed characters, some more hardened by prison life.
Others never left at all.
For many, their last glimpse of the world came from the gallows of the prison yard.
● Past Times continues its visit to Durham Jail next week.