A History Lesson In Horror

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NESTLING on the side of Berrycoombe Vale in the heart of Bodmin there’s been a jail in its current location since the reign of King George III.

In 1779 Sir John Call, a military engineer returned from India to complete a revolutionary custodial facility to newly drafted plans of the great prison reformer John Howard. Up until this point in our penal past the custody and care of those who fell on the wrong side of the law had been of secondary consideration and an altogether poorly managed affair.

In the 1797 writings of Henry Woollcombe II, the soon to be mayor of Plympton, he observes on his travels from Sir William Molesworth at Pencarrow House, that ‘Bodmin is one long unmade street, [known today as Higher and Lower Bore Street] about a mile in length, not paved, full of French prisoners, with poor houses and a wretched Court House; the County Gaol much more impressive’. And indeed it was.

Completed by Stowey and Jones architects and builders of Exeter, the Georgian jail ran effectively into the early 1850s, save for a few modifications and extensions completed by the Plymouth architect George Wightwick; a pupil and understudy to John Foulston, who was responsible for ‘The County Lunatic Assylum’ in Bodmin and many of Plymouth’s grand buildings, crescents, squares and the road that connected the towns of Plymouth, East Stone House and Devonport, known today as Union Street.