Founded 1980
Chair:
Secretary:
Treasurer:
Graham Smith
Jan Thompson
Graham Mumby-Croft
Home
Graham Smith
Issue No. 91 Autumn 2024
Where did you go for your holidays this year – Graham Smith
Where did you go for your holidays this year, guess where we went to?
No, we didn’t stay at the now abandoned Shrewsbury Prison, which is now a museum and film set, we went to Ludlow a lovely Shropshire town and a thirty minute train ride from Shrewsbury.
We like to have a UK holiday each year and before you ask the weather (and the beer} was excellent so we do day trips from our base usually making good use of our National Trust membership. One of our trips was by train to Shrewsbury and when we walked out of the station there was a sign directing folk to the jail so I thought how impressed my wife would be if I showed her a prison albeit now closed. Oddly she didn’t seem that excited but then hey ho time would tell.
The first sight to greet you on entry (not through the main gate) is a constantly revolving screen address by Gerry Hendry (pictured left) the last Governor, then to book the tour in the visitors centre. When I was an SO at Winson Green in the 70’s I used to do the odd call in on my Sunday rest day to take an overcrowding draft of 20 ish to HMP Shrewsbury ,all shop lifters of course, then leg it from reception before they realised what we had delivered.
There was a group of around 20 of us on the 90 minute tour including several teenagers and some senior citizens. Having been retired for 15 years I wondered how it would feel to go into a Victorian prison again as they were the only type of prison I worked in. It did feel odd and generated lots of memories good and not so good if you get my drift. Our guide was Donna who I don’t think was ever in the Prison Service though she did wear a uniform and she had lots of stories to tell as we progressed through the reception and wings. She recalled the prison history and in reception the way searching was aimed at preventing illicit items entering the prison. On the wings she placed some of the younger ones in a cell so they could experience what being locked up was like, they loved it. She recalled ghost stories recalling both good and evil spooks roaming the prison at night.
The tour ended with a visit to the gallows and stories of a number of folk hanged and the process itself which was received with fascination by the group and as you know was always the case in our older jails when we had visitors.
I have to say it was an interesting experience and I know lots of you would say you would not want to set foot in another jail as long as you lived but it reminded me of what we did and I gave 40 years and 5 weeks to the Prison Service most of which was rewarding and yes a bit scary at times. Did my wife enjoy it? Well she said she did and I paid so nothing lost there then.
Click on Pics to enlarge
