New Prison
Names
- New Prison
- Clerkenwell House of Detention
Street/Area/District
- Clerkenwell Close
Maps & Views
- 1720 London (Strype): New Prison
- 1746 London, Westminster & Southwark (Rocque): New Prison
- 1761 London (Dodsley): New Prison
Descriptions
from A New View of London, by Edward Hatton (1708)
New Prison. Clerkenwell Close, in or near which there [is] ... New Prison, a commodious Building where such Criminals as are last mentioned lie till their Punishment is ordered (this being a Prison but no House of Correction) when they are all removed to the last [Clerkenwell House of Correction] or some other place to receive Correction and Punishment according to the nature of their Crimes. It was intended as an ease to Newgate for any Misdemeanour, &c. as aforesaid, done in the County of Middlesex. Capt. Wicks is the present Master. See the Statutes.
from London Past and Present: Its History, Associations, and Traditions, by Henry Benjamin Wheatley and Peter Cunningham (1891)
Clerkenwell House of Detention, at the north-east end of Clerkenwell Close, occupies the site of the New Prison, which, dating from the 17th century, was rebuilt in 1775 and again in 1818. The present prison was erected in 1845–1846 from the designs of Messrs Moseley, architects, at a cost of nearly £30,000, but it has since under gone alterations and enlargement. It was appropriated to the detention of prisoners awaiting trial at the assizes. On the afternoon of December 13, 1867, a barrel of gunpowder was exploded against the east wall of the prison, in the hope of making a breach in the wall through which two Fenian prisoners confined under remand on that side of the prison might make their escape. The breach was made, but, in consequence of a warning conveyed anonymously, the prisoners had been removed to another part of the prison. The consequences of this dastardly outrage outside the prison were most disastrous. A row of small houses opposite was shattered, and many others greatly injured. Six persons were killed and fifty wounded, all belonging to the poorer class, and several being women and children. It was in Clerkenwell Prison that Smollett represents Humphrey Clinker as haranguing the prisoners. The prison was closed in accordance with the provisions of the Prisons Act of 1877, by which the old obligations of the county and other local authorities in regard to prisons were abolished.
from Survey of London: Volume 46, South and East Clerkenwell, ed. Philip Temple (London County Council; British History Online) (2008)
New Prison. By 1685 a second county prison [in addition to the Bridewell in Clerkenwell] had been built to the south of the workhouse and Bridewell. A 'house of detention' for those awaiting trial who could no longer be accommodated at Newgate, this too was called the New Prison.7 It was considerably enlarged and rebuilt in 1774–5 to designs by Thomas Rogers, the county surveyor.8
8 LMA, MA/G/GEN/ 1; MJ/OC/ 8–10 passim