Cambridge Town Gaol overlooking Parker's Piece

This history trail audio is narrated by the poet Michael Rosen, with script researched by Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks. This recording is part of a series of Cambridge history trails which have lyrics inspired by 'history beneath our feat' performed by local school children, with poems by the top poet Michael Rosen and songs by the funny team at CBBC's songwriters commissioned by Historyworks. To find more trails and further information, go to http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/trails

There are records of a Town Gaol in Cambridge from the 13th century onwards. Early on there was a small cell on the marketplace and a big facility up on Castle Hill. The new gaol was only located on Parker’s Piece for a relatively short amount of time in the 19th century; it was built in 1827, but had fallen out of use by 1878.

The building of the Town Gaol on Parker’s Piece was a controversial matter because Parker’s Piece marked an area of a donated meadow that the University and the town and shared. In those days beyond Parker’s Piece there were just fields and market gardens, orchards and a mill to grind cereal for bread, milking parlours for cows, pigsties and orchards bordering the way out of town along Mill Road.

But the Council had an eye on using the space and started buying up parcels of land for Victorian welfare institutions like a Workhouse on Mill Road, and then further out, a Hospital for people with highly infectious diseases.

Building a Town Gaol, was an incredibly expensive enterprise, costing the town £25,000! Not everybody was happy to pay for a new prison. Lord Palmerston presented a petition to Parliament from the Chancellor, Master, and Scholars of the University of Cambridge, complaining that they should not have to pay for the new prison. This was clearly a matter of tension between town and gown.

The new prison was apparently state of the art. The Municipal commissioners visiting the Town Gaol in 1833 were very impressed. They noted that there were 8 yards for the prisoners to exercise, 8 dayrooms, and the prison could comfortably accommodate 47 prisoners. Indeed, in 1832 there had been 208 prisoners staying at the gaol in total, and there had been no deaths, a fact that was considered something of a success. We are also told that the prisoners had their own chaplain.

In old photographs and engravings the prison building looks monumental, like a castle, with a large gateway and crenalations along the top. The rough location was where the Parkside Pool ends and the Kelsey Kerridge Sports Hall stands today. In the pictures of 1838 depicting the huge feast on Parker’s Piece to celebrate the Coronation of Queen Victoria, the artist is clearly on the roof of the Town Gaol, because it overlooks Parker’s Piece from the south side. The famous engravings of the feast show ladies in their finery observing the feast from the crenalations.

We know a lot about the prisoners held at Cambridge Town Gaol from newspaper reports about their crimes, and trials. Theft was a common crime. For example a ring of thieves were committed to the gaol after stealing a silver watch, and another thief was said to have stolen a bay horse. Crimes included political corruption. A certain Robert Canham spent 3 months at the gaol in 1835 for trying to bribe inhabitants into voting for the Tory candidate in the election! But there were miscarriages of justice. For example, an unnamed individual was arrested for sending three parcels of stolen pigeons to London by the Norwich coach. He accused the keeper of Cambridge Town Gaol of false imprisonment, and, after being proven innocent was paid damages for the mistake.