1. An ‘Ordinary’ Prison: The History of HMP Canterbury
Dr Maryse Tennant
Canterbury Christ Church University
Friday 20th March 2015

2. Image familiar
The former HMP Canterbury which was closed on 31st March 2013 and purchased by the Canterbury Christ Church University in April Already owned the Old Sessions House which was constructed at the same time as the prison, and to which the prison is attached by a now blocked tunnel.
Outline of talk:
Brief outline of the history of the prison and discussion of ways in which it is reflective of the general development of imprisonment in England and Wales from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. An ordinary prison – with a few extraordinary elements.

3. University interested in space.
University plans – student accommodation but also a range of other buildings. Large amount of extra space added to the campus.
Listed – Grade II – amended in February 2014 and now includes: the entrance lodge, perimeter wall, Octagon and A, B and C wings.
Listed because of: early date (pre-Victorian elements which survive largely intact, architectural merit (particularly the entrance lodge and octagon), rarity (only two other examples of Byfield’s radial prison designs survive intact), degree of survival (all structures substantially intact), historic interest (reflects changing prison design across the 19th C).
I’m more interested because of history.

4. The History of Canterbury Prison
Gaol and House of Correction –
Local Prison –
Closed –
Naval Detention Quarters –
Local Prison –
Category C Training Prison –
Foreign Nationals Prison –

5. St Augustine’s Gaol and House of Correction
Replaced the old county gaol at St Dunstan’s (not the Westgate gaol)
Opened in 1808 as the new Sessions House, Gaol and House of Correction for the East Division of the Kent Quarter Sessions
Between “the English local prison system was consistently enlarged” (Evans, 1982: 236) – 38 new prisons built
Kent a much larger county stretching from London to the English Channel and North Sea. The Quarter Sessions divided between the West Division centred on Maidstone (which had its own prison) and the East Division centred on Canterbury.
County gaol for the East Division was at St Dunstan’s – just along the road from the Westgate gaol. Formerly been at Canterbury Castle and this was still the county gaol in 1400s. References to St Dunstan’s gaol in bequests from the 1600s.
Description John Howard The State of the Prisons in England and Wales in 1774.
Was not until October 1804 that the East Kent Quarter Sessions decided that it was unsuitable and Committee was appointed to oversee the building of a new gaol and sessions house.
Site was purchased in 1805 and the building work was implemented quite quickly with the prison completed in and receiving its first prisoners by 1808.
First escape quite soon: prisoners led in from St Dunstan’s to the new site connected by chains. On the way 17 year old thief George Wise managed to slip his cuffs and disappear. A reward of 5 guineas was offered for his return but there is not evidence that he was ever captured.
Reflective of wider developments. Expansion largely the result of local effort, although from the 1820s central government beginning to exert more control over local prisons through the introduction of rules and regulations.
Other prisons built in this time period include: Maidstone, Dover, York and Durham.

6. Design: Detached Radial Design
Architect:
George Byfield
Design: Detached Radial Design
Byfield was the “perfector of the of the early-ninteenth century radial” (Evans, 1982: 410)
Plan of ground floor of Canterbury prison dated 1806.
Concentric planning widely accepted as the norm of prison design at this time but there were two competing designs: radial and pologonal.
Radial was the more common of the two – 30 of the 38 new prisons constructed between 1800 and 1832 were radial.
Central block containing the governor’s house and the chapel were connected to detached radical wings by iron walkways. Byfield had built similar designs at Worcester and Bury St Edmunds before Canterbury.
In relation to ideas of surveillence and inspection so closely associated with Bentham’s panopticon two contradictory ideas can be seen in the radial design: centrality and distance. Some governor’s chose to run prisons from their central position without entering them as much as possible. One of Canterbury’s early governors – Thomas Le Breton – opposed this separation as he felt it hampered inspection of the prisoners – both visually and audibly. He criticised the design of Canterbury and offered an alternative in his book Thoughts on the Defective State of Prisons published in 1822.
Treadwheel was added at the end of the north wing – definitely in place by 1824 and it was the only real form of labour for prisoners until the 1850s. Used to grind corn and pump water.
Three wings at Canterbury – each divided by a central longitudinal wall.
West Wing – held female prisoners; North wing held male prisoners; East wing held men and some female felons. The wings contained day rooms and work rooms on the ground floor as well as cells and cells only on the first floor. The infirmaries were on the second floor of the north wing which was the only three storey wing. Prison could hold 48 prisoners originally.

7. Victorian Developments
By the late-Victorian period the prison resembled much more closely the building you’ll see today.
Roundhouse, the lodge and the detached West Wing were still present.
The East Wing had been replaced with A Block in the 1840s and further extended in the 1850s. When the Prison Commissioners took over the prison in 1878 the North and West Wings were described as “very old prisons useless at present”. However, there refurbishments, although extensive only removed the North Wing. B Wing had been completed by 1881 and C Wing, which housed female prisoners and a laundry, by the following year. The West Wing was not demolished until the 1960s when the Administration Block which now stands there was constructed.
Kitchen at the back was built in the late 1850s – now astro truf.

8. Local Prison
First Governor of local prison was James William Newham ( , governor from 1878)
Formerly deputy governor at Maidstone – “Dreamed I had been appointed Governor of Maidstone Gaol”
18 March “Mr Libby, H.O. Clerk of Works, visited the prison after his chief, Capt. McHardy had been this morning – jackal after tiger instead of before. Growled in imitation of tiger and hinted darkly about further enlargement of prison”
Reluctant governor of Canterbury
Much occupied by the refurbishments – frustration at the slow progression of work and the “great increase of work and anxiety” that they involved. No great fan of the bureaucracy of the prison commission – quotation.
Refurbishments also reduced the security of the prison.
Escape – August 1879 – Michael Angels was allowed to escape “through the gross negligence of a temporary warder”. Angels left his work in the smithy and unnoticed walked through the breach in the prison walls which had been partly demolished to allow for the rennovations which were taking place. Picked up later near Whitstable. Newham was ordered by the Prison Commissioners to stop rebuilding the boundary wall and fill in the breach.
Attempted escape of a young prisoner (14 – William Tricker) who hid in the unfinished pipe culvert of the new women’s prison.
Continued as a local prison until its closure in March 1922.
From 1919 the women’s wing was closed and began to be used as a hospital and later a borstal.
The year before its closure it had a capacity of 138. The decision to close Canterbury was taken to “achieve the reduction of expenditure” required by the Report of the Committee on National Economy. 7 other small local prisons were closed at this time. The prison remained in the possession of the prison commission, however, and, although partially used to store archives some parts remained functional. The West Wing was used as holding cells for the adjacent court and C Wing and the laundry were available for use in an emergency.

9. Naval Detention Quarters
Admiralty took over the whole site from January 1942 for use as an NDQ
“The detention barracks were said to be places where they ‘tamed lions’” (Emsley, 2013: 65)
Growth of royal dockyards in Kent from the late seventeenth century meant that the county had “a large, permanent military presence” (Hastings, 2001: 218)
Navy had four detention centres during the Second World War and any sailor sentenced to more than 14 days served this in a detention barracks.
The Committee of Inquiry into detention barracks in 1943, which resulted from the death a rifleman following a beating in Fort Darland detention barracks at Gillingham, found the naval institutions to be the harshest of all the military prisons – although William Clayton had actually died in an institution run by the army. In Detention Quarters the men wore uniforms, everything was done at the double and petty officers drilled the men to perform tasks which were often pointless such as moving rubble to one place and then back. Men had to sleep on bare boards without blankets for at least the first two weeks of their incarceration.
The imprisonment of military personnel is a theme that runs through the early history of the prison. In the 1840s there were concerns about the disruptive effect of the high number of soldiers in the prison who were considered “the most troublesome, insubordinate and violent prisoners”. It was ordered that military committals should cease but in 1876 Canterbury was holding 30 soldiers or sailors under sentence of court martial. Clive Emsley has discussed the threat that clusters of imprisoned servicemen could pose to prison discipline. At the end of the first world war the closed female prison was used to hold military prisoners and conscientious objectors. The prison was still holding conscientious objectors in the 1950s and it is likely that the Krays spent at least a night in the prison whilst they were serving time for being absent without leave from military service. I have yet to definitely verify this however!

10. Canterbury’s Shawshank Redemption
May 1948 – “one of the most daring prison breaks Kent has ever known” Whitstable Times, 15th May 1948
Shortly after it reopened one of the more dramatic moments of Canterbury’s history occurred with a ‘daring’ break out which mirrored the escape depicted in the Shawshank Redemption – well almost anyway.
On a foggy night in May 1848 five prisoners who were sharing a cell used the inclement weather to cover their escape through a hole in the cell wall. They had been picking out mortar from between the bricks and disposing of this for some time before they were able to put their plan into effect by removing bricks to create a large enough hole to wriggle through. Using a rope of knotted blankets they lowered themselves 30 feet to the prison yard. They clambered onto the kitchen roof to scale the prison wall and nipped through the governor’s garden to railings outside. The men were believed to have been picked up by a car outside the prison and managed to lay low for most of the following day. Around 6.30 they were located in some woods around Swarling Manor 15 miles from Canterbury. The police requested the assistance of some farm labourers and went in pursuit – during the course of which one prisoner was shot in the shoulder – the policeman having aimed about their heads but tripped due to the uneven ground. All five were eventually captured.

11. Local Prison (Again)
Re-opened in October 1946 to meet the prison service’s need for additional accommodation
Capacity for 182 men when reopened. By the 1970s the prison was regularly holding men
Development of the site from the 1960s which included the Administration Block, the hospital wing and a new kitchen and chapel
Physical condition described as ‘fair’ but future potential as ‘poor’ in 1980 :
Won’t say much about the later history of the prison as Iain is going to talk about his experiences working there for twenty years.
However, later history is reflective of the general developments within the prison estate more widely.
Reopened in 1946 at a time when other prisoners such as Reading were also re-commissioned as well as new sites being opened, for example East Sutton Park (where Iain now works) which was a borstal for girls. Work was undertaken to modernise the kitchens and sanitation facilities as well as to provide accommodation for staff. The warder’s housing which is now St Martin’s Terrace was taken back from the City Council and tenants were given notice to leave – an issue which was raised in Parliament but to no avail. Additional housing also put up where the Green Car Park now is at the side of the prison.
However, Canterbury, along with much of the prison estate, had suffered from problems of overcrowding since the 1970s and this continued. In 2009 it was recognised by the Prison Reform Trust as the 11th most overcrowded prison in the country.
The capacity on re-opening was 182 – later expanded to 196. Original cell blocks remain in much the same form as in the late nineteenth century but many additions to the site. Handout 3. Many of these dated from the 1960s and were recognised as in need of repair and redevelopment by the turn of the century. The physical condition still considered fair in 1980 but its future potential was thought to be poor. However, continued to operate for a further three decades and was involved in some innovative developments in his last phases.

12. Final Phases Became a Category C Training Prison in 2002
Awarded the Lord Woolf Award for their Short-Term Prisoners Project Group in This work had been influential in the decision to make the site a training prison.
Became the first Foreign Nationals Prison in 2006
Problems with overcrowding continued and resettlement was difficult because of a lack of national support
Reverend Cathy Hitchens (Chaplain): “It was the happiest prison I’ve ever worked in”
The idea of training prisons had developed from the 1920s. When Canterbury was reopened in 1946 it has taken over from Maidstone as the local prison for the area – allowing Maidstone to concentrate fully on its role as a training prison. As early as 2000 there had been speculation about the future of Canterbury prison but it was recognised for its innovative work on with persistent short-term offenders. A Report on the prison recommended it could become an urban resettlement prison meeting the needs of its local population and in 2002 it was turned into a category C training prison. Shortly after this transition Canterbury was recognised for its innovative multi-agency approach to supporting persistent short-term offenders. Project included the prison staff, the police and probation but also employment and benefits agencies, drug and alcohol units, social services and the NHS. It involved pre-release risk assessments and a pre-release inter-agency conference as well as the use of mentors and a post-release support package.
Canterbury already had reasonably high levels of foreign national prisons in 2000 as a result of high levels of drug related offences in Kent. The growing number of foreign national prisoners across the country, which largely resulted from the imposition of length sentences for drug trafficking, led to a policy of concentration and Canterbury was selected as one of 3 institutions to hold only foreign nation prisoners.
Work was undertaken to redevelop the site so that it was suitable for its new functions. The prison staff worked hard to adapt to the new demands of a diverse population in conditions where overcrowding continued to be a problem and in which there was little national support for rehabilitative regimes with foreign national prisoners. So at the end of its 200 hundred plus year history the institution was still adapting to the pressures and demands of changing penal landscape. Cathy Hitchens has talked about the changes necessitated to the chaplaincy as a result of the diverse cultural and religious population of the prison, an experience she felt generated “quite radical” results and helped to contribute to a relaxed and settled prison with high levels of respect between staff and inmates.
I’m sure Iain will have more to say about this – and whether that was also his experience remains to be seen.

13. References
Emsley, C. (2013) Soldier, Sailor, Beggarman, Thief: Crime and the British Armed Services since 1914, Oxford University Press: Oxford
Evans, R. (1982) The Fabrication of Virtue: English Prison Architecture, , Cambridge University Press: Cambridge
Hastings, P. (2001) ‘Crime and Public Order’ in F, Lansberry (ed.) Government and Politics in Kent, , The Boydell Press and Kent County Council: Woodbridge, pp