Brick

The robustness of the Victorian prison means it continues to define how we think of prisons and the experience of living and working inside. Between 1842 and 1877, ninety prisons were built in Britain. While many of these buildings have been demolished or no longer function as prisons, the thirty-two which remain hold 22,000 people, or over a quarter of the custodial population of England and Wales. Like the hospitals, workhouses, and asylums built at the same time, Victorian prisons were imposing red brick monuments to civic pride and older ideas of reform and citizenship.

Annual Report of the Prison Commissioners (1937), p.30.

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A grand façade!

If these walls could speak

Bricks don’t really crack

A thousand years

Always built things to last

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