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The House of Correction at Folkingham

There has been a House of Correction at Folkingham since 1609. The original building, now two houses in the Market Place, had four cells and a small yard for exercise. Here, in a system devised by the Elizabethans, the ‘idle poor’ were confined and put to work to teach them to amend their ways.

The original House of Correction was also known as “Bridewells” after the first to be founded in a former Royal Palace in London. Whilst the corrective power of hard labour lay behind the original houses, they soon merged with ordinary gaols and lock-ups.

When an inspector visited in 1774 this is what the Folkingham house had become. His damning report stated that not only was the accommodation damp and cramped, but there was no water pump or sewer. It was not until another inspector’s report of 1802 told of no change of circumstances that plans were put into place for such improvements.

Work began on a new House of Correction in 1808. It was built on the site of the great castle of De Gaunts and the De Beaumonts which had been abandoned since the sixteenth century.

What had been a moated inner ward now became the new strongly walled compound. However, the entrance was quite humble, merely an opening in the brick outer wall with the Turnkey’s lodge just inside. Beyond stood the Governor’s house, on the far side of which was the ‘Airing Yard’ for the prisoners surrounded by the prison cells and ancillary buildings.

It was declared that all prisoners, by reason of their functions, should be depressing and evoke misery or, in the case of criminal prisons, actual horror. An eighteenth century edict ordained “let there be deepest shade, cavernous entrances and terrifying inscriptions”.

Apparently the original entrance at Folkingham did not express these sentiments strongly enough and in 1825 a talented local architect, Bryan Browning, was commissioned to build a new gatehouse. As this gatehouse shows he had undoubtedly learned how to project power to a design by use of solid mass and form, giving it a sinister appearance which must have struck terror into the hearts of newly arrived inmates.

The regime in prison was still based on the original lines of reform. Harsh treatment, hard labour, bare boards to sleep on, bread and gruel to eat and work on a treadmill or stone breaking. In other words ‘a short, sharp shock’. (Where have I heard that expression recently? Nothing is new).

Women prisoners worked in the laundry or picked oakhum. The latter was a tedious job entailing teasing out fibres in old rope. The threads where then used for caulking the timbers in ships.

Of course, all prisoners also had to attend a daily chapel service to pray for forgiveness of their sins.

Folkingham House of Correction closed in 1878 and was sold to a builder who pulled down the outer wall and turned the prison buildings into cottages. In the 1930s the gatehouse was also converted into a dwelling by erecting a brick addition at the rear.

In the 1960s the cottages were declared unfit for human habitation and demolished. The gatehouse would have suffered a similar fate but for the timely intervention of Sir Arthur and Lady Peterson, who rescued the building in 1965. They handed it over to the Landmark Trust in 1982. This is a charity which rescues historic buildings and gives them a new life by letting them out as holiday homes. So now this highly unusual property has a secure future and if you or your friends fancy a holiday with a difference, contact the Landmark Trust. I inspected the accommodation some years ago and, so far as I recall, it comprises two double bedrooms, bathroom, sitting room and dining kitchen with modern conveniences. It certainly is unique.

by Henry Brown