If these walls could speak
they would never speak to you
You could pull them down
block by block,
Sit in your historic ruins
and they would be cold, mute,
indifferent to middle class
pebble dash.
You could grope each brick
rub your swollen chattered tongue along
and have no taste for it.
(Other than a wife’s sulphuric revenge,
her bitter sister, company director,
hypocrite headmaster).
You could take the powdered mortar
cook it, mainline it with a pin
Snort a pinch between your fingers
but never know those that walked within.
You could swab the cracks
to test the builders’ DNA
and never get a match.
(Other than the murderer and
asylum porter,
They make their tea with leaded water).
You could pick, unpick fordite paint,
peeling back the layers from the stone.
A chuckle spread from ear to ear
but nothing in the tone.
You could drive the moisture
from the fired clay
sucking out each tiny pore
but these walls will never talk and set you free
in the way they share a tale with me.
HMP Liverpool
We want to understand what these prisons are like to live and work in, and how has this changed over time. We are examining the ways that these prison buildings carry traces of the past, while operating in the present day.
The project considers how and why these buildings have survived for so long, and asks how we will know when they have reached the end of their operational lives. We consider the significance of the Victorian prison in shaping public and professional ideas of what prison should be like. Crucially, this project explores the implications of the continued operation of Victorian-era prisons for the contemporary prison service, and aims to inform policy development.