HM Prison Shepton Mallet


HMP Shepton Mallet, sometimes known as Cornhill, is a former prison located in Shepton Mallet, Somerset, England. When it closed in 2013, it was the United Kingdom's oldest operating prison, and had been since the closure of HMP Lancaster Castle in 2011. Before closure Shepton Mallet was a category C lifer prison holding 189 prisoners. The prison building is grade II* listed, while the former gatehouse and perimeter walls are grade II.
The prison was opened before 1625 but was already in poor repair by the end of the First English Civil War in 1646. It was expanded in 1790 but conditions were again criticised in a report of 1822 and further building work was undertaken in the 1820s and 1830s. This included the installation of a treadwheel for those sentenced to hard labour. In 1843 the number of cells was increased by adding a second storey to each wing. The prison was damaged during a fire in 1904. In 1930 the number of inmates had fallen and the prison was closed.
Following the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 the prison was reopened as a military prison. It was initially used by the British Army and later by American forces who constructed a new execution block to hang condemned prisoners. It was also used for the storage of important historical documents from the Public Record Office in London, including Domesday Book. Following the war the prison continued as a military "glasshouse" until it was returned to civilian use in 1966.
The prison's closure was announced in January 2013 and completed in March 2013. The building was sold in December 2014 to City and Country for redevelopment, which is planned to include assisted living units alongside retail and social amenity areas. it is open as a visitor attraction and event venue, and tours are available daily under the Jailhouse Tours brand.

History prior to the Second World War

17th and 18th centuries

The prison was established as a house of correction in 1625 to comply with the 1610 Bridewell Act of King James I requiring that every county have such a house. The building and surrounding land of was bought from the Reverend Edward Barnard for £160. In the 17th century Shepton Mallet was not the only place of imprisonment in Somerset: the County Gaol was in Ilchester; there was another house of correction at Ilchester; and one at Taunton.
At the time all prisonersmen, women and childrenwere held together in reportedly dreadful conditions. The gaoler was not paid, instead making an income from fees from his prisoners; for example, for providing them with liquor. By the end of the First English Civil War in 1646 the house of correction was described as being in poor repair. During the Bloody Assizes following the Monmouth Rebellion at least 12 local men were held at the gaol before being hanged, drawn and quartered at the Market Cross.
In 1773, a commissioner appointed by Parliament to inspect prisons around the country reported that sanitation at Shepton Mallet House of Correction was extremely poor. He said:
In 1790 additional land was purchased to extend the prison, and around this time men and women began to be held in separate areas. Further extensions were carried out from 1817 to 1822, with the prison holding about 200 prisoners.

19th century

A report into the state of prisons in Somerset by Sir John Hippisley of Ston Easton Park in 1822 criticised the conditions in which prisoners were held. He proposed a five-year plan to expand the prison as a cost of £5,000.
In 1823, a large treadwheel, designed by William Cubitt and built by Stotherts of Bath, later Stothert & Pitt, was installed within the prison, in the 1840s Stotherts were contracted as engineers to build the new Bath City Gaol in Twerton, and later went on to build the treadwheel at that prison. The building for the treadwheel and other new buildings were designed by George Allen Underwood. Men who had been sentenced to hard labour would serve their punishment on this. 40 men would tread the wheel for many hours at a time, a punishment which was recorded as causing hernias in some convicts. The wheel was used to power a grain mill situated outside the prison wall. The wheel remained in use until 1890. Other prisoners were engaged in breaking stones which were used for roadbuilding, oakum picking and other tasks.
Further building work to designs by Richard Carver, the county surveyor, was undertaken in the 1830s and 1840s. This included the rebuilding of the front range and the addition of the gatehouse. The chapel was built in 1840. The wings were adapted and a second storey added to each one. Additional building work completed the enclosure of the quadrangle or exercise yard.
In 1842 inspectors appointed by the government reported that Shepton Mallet prison was:
Ilchester Gaol closed in 1843, with the inmates being transferred to Shepton Mallet and Taunton. In 1845 the prison was recorded as holding 270 prisoners. By 1897 the population was only 61, overseen by a governor, three warders, six assistant warders and a night watchman. Other staff included a chaplain and assistant chaplain, a surgeon, a matron and a school master. In 1884 it was designated as the county gaol for Somerset under the Prison Act 1877.

1904 fire

At 10:15pm on Saturday 2 July 1904 a fire, believed to have been started by a prisoner about half an hour earlier, was discovered in C block. The alarm was raised by the ringing of the prison bell and the prisoners were evacuated to the prison chapel. Within ten minutes the town fire brigade, which was provided by the Anglo-Bavarian Brewery, was in attendance. They were joined at about midnight by the Wells brigade and at about 3:00am by the Frome and Glastonbury brigades. The fire had spread quickly within C block and was fought by prisoners, warders and firemen working together; prisoners helped to man the hoses and worked the fire engine pumps in shifts.
Despite the opportunity offered by the disruption, no prisoner attempted to escape. There were no fatalities as a result of the fire, and no major injuries. Whilst contemporary photographs show that the roof of C block was substantially destroyed, the building itself, being constructed of stone and concrete, remained nearly intact. Consequently it was not necessary to transfer any prisoners to other jails.

Closure in 1930

In 1930 the Prisoner Commissioners recommended to the Government that Shepton Mallet Prison should be closed because it was under-used, having an average population in previous years of only 51 inmates. The prison closed in September of that year, with the prisoners and some of the staff transferring to other jails in neighbouring counties. The prison itself remained empty except for a caretaker until the outbreak of the Second World War.

Civilian executions

The total number of executions at Shepton Mallet in its early years is unknown. Seven judicial executions took place within the prison walls between 1889 and 1926:
Their remains were buried in unmarked graves within the walls of the prison, as was customary following British executions.

Use during the Second World War

The prison was reopened for British military use in October 1939. It soon housed 300 men from all three armed services, with some having to live in huts in the prison yard.
In November 1940 three British soldiers, who were incarcerated in room 142 close to the B1 landing died of asphyxiation/carbon monoxide poisoning. Another soldier, also held in the same room survived. The names of the soldiers who died were Frank Girvan, Glen Roy Williams and Harold Smith..

Public Records storage

With the outbreak of war the prison also took into protective storage many important historical documents from the Public Record Office in London, including Domesday Book, the logbooks of, the Olive Branch Petition, and dispatches from the Battle of Waterloo. In all about 300 tons of records were transported to Shepton Mallet. Some documents, but not Domesday Book, were moved out of Shepton Mallet on 5July 1942 due to concern at the concentration of important items being held in one place, especially with German bombs falling on nearby Bath and Bristol. During their time at Shepton Mallet the archives were still able to be accessed. The archives were returned to London after the end of the war, between 10July 1945 and 1February 1946.

American military use

Between mid-1942 and September 1945 the prison was used by the American military as the "6833rd Guardhouse Overhead Detachment", later "The Headquarters 2912th Disciplinary Training CenterAPO 508 United States Army". The prison was entirely staffed by American military personnel during this period. The first commandant was Lieutenant Colonel James P. Smith of the 707th Military Police Battalion.
At times during its use by the Americans Shepton Mallet held many more men than it had before. At the end of 1944 there were 768 soldiers imprisoned, guarded by 12 officers and 82 enlisted men.

American military executions

Under the provisions of the United States of America Act 1942, 18 American servicemen were executed at the prison: sixteen were hanged in the execution block and two were shot by a firing squad in the prison yard. Three of the hangings were double executions, i.e. two condemned prisoners stood together on the gallows and were executed simultaneously when the trap-door opened.
Of the 18 men executed, nine were convicted of murder, six of rape, and three of both crimes. A Channel 4 film claimed that a disproportionate number of black soldiers were executed. Although the U.S. military was 90% white, 10 of the 18 men hanged there were black and three were Hispanic.
The Americans constructed a small, two-storey building containing a gallows adjoining one of the prison wings. The flat-roofed execution block has a single window, approximately one metre above the trap-door. There is an external wooden door on the ground floor which gives access to the area underneath the trapdoor. It was through this door that the bodies of executed prisoners were removed. The barred steel mortuary door, located below C wing, directly faces the external wooden door to the execution block. The execution block is sandwiched tightly between two much larger buildings, close to the rear of the prison. Visually, it clashes with the other architecture because it is made of red brick, whereas the rest of the prison is constructed from stone.
The executioner at most of the hangings was Thomas William Pierrepoint, assisted mainly by his more-famous nephew Albert Pierrepoint, though some other assistant executioners were used, e.g. Alex Riley and Herbert Morris. Executions by hanging took place after midnight, at around 1:00am. Albert Pierrepoint is known to have disapproved of the Americans' practice of reading out to the condemned man as he stood on the trap-door the details of his offence and sentence, then allowing him to make a final statement. He said:
The names and dates of American military executions are as follows:
Initially, the remains of American prisoners executed at Shepton Mallet were interred in unmarked graves at "Plot X" in Brookwood Cemetery. Plot X was located in a distant corner of the cemetery, away from the other plots and adjacent to tool sheds and a compost heap. Executed prisoners interred there were not given coffins, but were put into cotton mattress covers and buried in individual graves under numbered markers. Plot X had room for one hundred graves and was the first effort to segregate executed Army prisoners from those who had been killed in combat.
In 1949 all eighteen bodies were exhumed. The remains of David Cobb were repatriated to his home of Dothan, Alabama. The remaining 17 were reburied in Plot E at Oise-Aisne American Cemetery and Memorial in France. Plot E is a private section intended for the "dishonoured dead" which is situated across the road from the main cemetery. Visits to Plot E are not encouraged. Public access is difficult because the area is concealed, surrounded by bushes, and is closed to visitors. In any case, all the grave markers in Plot E bear only numbers, which makes identification of individual soldiers impossible without the key. The US government published a list identifying the occupants of each grave in 2009.

British military use

In September 1945 the prison was once again taken over by the British Army and became a British military prison for service personnel. It was used for soldiers who were going to be discharged after serving their sentence, provided that sentences were less than two years.
Amongst the soldiers held here were the Kray twins who, while serving out their national service in the gaol after absconding, met Charlie Richardson. Discipline was very strict and the punishments meted out to prisoners were reportedly extremely severe. On 10March 1959 a riot began in the dining hall. Thirteen soldiers were subsequently tried by court martial, and five were sentenced to three years' imprisonment; the remainder were acquitted.

Postwar use

The prison was returned to civilian use in 1966. It was initially used to house prisoners who, for their own protection, could not be housed with 'run-of-the-mill' prisoners, and also for well-behaved first offenders.
The gallows in the execution block was removed in 1967 and the room became the prison library. A new kitchen, boiler room, chapel and education block was added.
In 1973 Shepton Mallet became a training prison for men serving sentences of less than four years. The aim was to provide the inmates with the education and skills necessary for them to become productive members of society after their release. There were now about 260 prisoners who worked in a range of workshops, including plastic moulding, tailoring and scrap metal recovery. Some also worked outside the prison, for example in the local park or churchyard, on local farms or at the Babycham brewery.
In the 1980s the prison held prisoners who had been in prison several times before and had not reformed. Around this time the population continued to be 260 living in accommodation designed for 169. In 1991, Shepton Mallet took its first category 'C' life prisoners – those nearing the end of their sentences. The maximum number of prisoners to be held in the prison was fixed at 211.
In 1992 the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Judge Stephen Tumim, issued a report which said:
Shepton Mallet became the first category 'C' second-stage solely-lifer prison on 1August 2001. It had an official capacity of 165, but in June 2010 was holding 188 prisoners, with arriving prisoners having to share cells for up to a year. It was divided into four wings:
An inspection report on the prison was issued following a full announced visit by inspectors from HM Chief Inspector of Prisons carried out in June 2010. The introduction to the report states:
The report commented in particular on the very good relations between prisoners and prison officers, and the low levels of self-harm, bullying, violence or drug use. Whilst the inspectors said that the accommodation was "old and tired", they felt that it was adequate for the current number of prisoners. The inspectors were concerned by proposals to increase the population by 70 prisoners.

Closure

On 10 January 2013 Justice Secretary Chris Grayling announced that Shepton Mallet Prison was one of seven prisons in England to close. HMP Shepton Mallet closed on 28March 2013. The closure ceremony was attended by officers and staff, past and present, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, veterans and serving personnel of MTC Colchester, representatives of the US Armed Forces and family and friends. The final act was the handover of the union flag to the last governor. The event was also marked by a fly past of a Royal Naval Lynx helicopter from RNAS Yeovilton and an hour and a half peal from the local church bells. The staff, who marched to parade just inside the main gates, accompanied by the RNAS Yeovilton Volunteer Band, were then dismissed.

Future

After closure, the prison was put up for sale by the Ministry of Justice. The original deadline to declare a preferred bidder for the site was the end of March 2014 but this was put back until mid-August. Proposals for the site included converting it into prison heritage centre with hotel, bar and restaurants as well as housing, or converting the complex into a museum, gym, a hotel and ghost and horror tours. The proposals were rejected in October.
On 24 December 2014 it was announced that Shepton Mallet Prison along with Dorchester Prison, Gloucester Prison and Kingston Prison had been sold to City and Country. There will be a community consultation on the development of all the sites, with plans including mixed-used schemes of assisted living units alongside retail and social amenity areas. In July 2015 they announced plans to convert some of the cell blocks into flats, houses or hotel rooms.
In December 2015 it was announced that D wing of the prison will become a temporary airsoft venue, before the block is demolished to make way for redevelopment. While awaiting redevelopment tours are available with Jailhouse Tours.

Former inmates

Escapes, successful and attempted, from Shepton Mallet Prison include:

Television

HM Prison Shepton Mellet was featured as a haunted location on the American paranormal television series Paranormal Lockdown which first aired in the United States on December 25, 2018 on Destination America. It later aired in the United Kingdom on January 30, 2020 on Quest Red.