Founded 1980
Chair:        
Secretary: 
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Graham Smith
Jan Thompson
Graham Mumby-Croft


Brian Penfold
Holloway Re-visited. (By Brian Penfold)

In my service career I worked at HM Prison Holloway on two occasions and these are my recollections of those times.

In the mid-eighties I was serving as a Trades Officer (when we had those) at Channings Wood in Devon on the only successful direct labour project that the service put in place. This project involved a high number of Trades Officers and civilian workers who, using prisoner labour, built the establishment. At the end of the project some of the TOs became spare and a link was made with Holloway to send a rolling team of STOs, TOs and civilian workers on a month’s detached duty to assist with some of their more pressing work. Working at Holloway involved new skills being learnt. More than once I was ‘captured’ on the stairs on “free flow”. I soon learnt to keep my distance.

The Works staff in those days, were called to assist if there was a barricade, as Holloway had a pair of wooden doors on each dormitory and the Works staff removed the door stops with a crowbar so that the doors could then be opened outwards. We helped install simple anti-barricade brackets to get around this. We ate three meals a day in the mess to save money so diet was not our main concern in those days. My striking memory of Holloway then was that each night everything came out of the windows, books, bedding, mattresses, cutlery and anything else not nailed down. Staff came out with blue bands and picked it all up each morning and re- issued new.

In later years I was an operational Manager E based at Wellingborough and received a phone call on a Tuesday from my old Governor, Ed Willetts who wanted me to start at Holloway on the following Monday as he had been posted there after a Home Office report. My Governor at Wellingborough was away on leave, so I was gone by the time he came back, Sorry Peter. As I had previously been an operational Head of Works Services, Ed asked me to go back to that role and work with Co-ordinator Graham Mumby-Croft at Holloway which I agreed to. The existing management team with a couple of exceptions had been moved on the previous Friday.

I served three years at Holloway at that time, on permanent detached duty, two as Head of Works Services and one as Head of Security. I always carried out a full day’s work and commuted between Wellingborough and Holloway each day which added over three hours if all went well. As Duty Governor on a weekend you had to deal with incidents of self-harm, fires, late receptions and normal duties that to me, all seemed to be accentuated from working in a male establishment. Duty Governor also involved an overnight stay. My first adjudication involved a prisoner crying as she was questioned and then she just ran out of the room. It was a case of adjusting to the establishment and then guiding it, and the staff, in a different direction rather than being too heavy-handed. The staff were in the main, fantastic and just needed leadership at that time.

As Head of Works Services I managed, with the brilliant support of GMC, and the existing Works staff to convert the old lock store to an external Receipt Issue and Despatch facility which allowed all deliveries to be managed before they entered the establishment This included the use of sealed electric vehicles similar to the High Security Estate (where I worked twice at Woodhill), relocating the gate lodge and keys from the first floor to the establishment entrance, converting the old mess to external male and female locker and shower rooms, installed an internal mess, converted the old external DST training room to an overnight stopover suite and Silver command suite that was also then adopted as the national standby gold suite, installed safer cells as well as anti-ligature cell windows throughout the establishment (no more stuff out of the windows). We upgraded C&R facilities and some other projects that I will have forgotten. I managed and upgraded staff training and the staff crèche in the same period. It was not bad for just two years in post. I received the Butler Trust award for my work at that time and took my wife and Ed Willets up to Buckingham Palace for the day. Nice sandwiches and pictures with the Princess Royal who supports the service. So, my experiences of Holloway were linked but very different. Before I left, to go back to Woodhill, the Holloway site was evaluated, so that has now come to pass with its closure.

I had a great career and Holloway was a memorable part of that career.