IT IS NOT many people’s dream to live in a jail — more commonly, those stuck on the inside fantasise about breaking out — but Andy Jones is no ordinary homeowner.
An entrepreneur and former punk rocker, he has used part of Littledean Jail in the Forest of Dean to house his extraordinary 25-year-old collection of crime memorabilia, and lives there with his wife, Nicola, and their six children. Ownership bestows the title Master of the Gaol; his wife is Matron.
“This place has all the serenity and splendour of a baronial family home — it’s more like living in a castle than in a jail,” says Jones, who deals in property, reclamation and salvage. “It’s wonderful having an 18ft-high sandstone wall around your property. It’s like living on your own little island.”
His association with the 18th-century prison goes back a long way. As a child he remembers walking past the walls of the jail near Cinderford in Gloucestershire and wondering what it was like inside. Back then, in the early 1970s, it was still being used as a police station and courthouse. It had stopped being used as a house of correction in 1854 but was still used as a remand prison. In 1972 the police station was closed and the last court sat on October 24, 1985. It was sold in 1986 to Ecclesiastical Insurance Group for £100,000, which used it to store its computer mainframe, archive records and disaster recovery unit.
The insurance company also carried out a major refurbishment. “They spent an absolute fortune — something like £700,000 — on the place with a new roof, complete rewiring, new windows and central heating throughout; all infrastructure works that I could never have afforded to complete,” says Jones. “Back in June 2003 we simply made an informal approach — it was not even on the market — whether or not we could possibly buy it. I didn’t even have a price in mind and thought it would be outside my price range anyway.
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“To cut a long story short, they agreed to sell it to us at an enormously discounted sum. When it became known that we had bought it, I was approached by several property entrepreneurs wanting it; we could have doubled the price we paid for it without even touching it.”
Jones bought the jail in September 2003 but spent much of last year in various planning battles. The existence of accommodation for non-prisoners in the jail’s original design was crucial to obtaining permission to convert the building into a family home. “I suppose in some way we took a risk, but I was convinced that with the jail having been lived in since it was first built in the 18th century by the jail’s caretakers, and a number of police families having lived there in times gone by, that the council would have to grant consent for the jail to be converted into a family home,” Jones recalls. “Fortunately our two local councillors were supportive and we subsequently won consent.”
The family finally moved in last autumn, but their problems were far from over. “Finding a surveyor to value the property, even for insurance purposes, has been difficult. Recently we had it valued as being in excess of £1.25 million, although the valuer put a caveat in that it was so unique that it could easily fetch between £2 million and £3 million. However, it’s not for sale.”
In all there is about 10,000 sq ft of useable space in the jail, which you enter through an austere gatehouse. Inside, 24 of the original 26 cells remain; the other two have been turned into en suite bathrooms. Jones has converted the prison chapel, infirmary and schoolroom to make eight bedrooms. Elsewhere there is the former courtroom, police station with its own accommodation, and various outbuildings, including a treadmill that was also once used to stable the county’s police horses.
The jail was built as a house of correction and was designed by the prison reformist Sir George Onesiphorus Paul. It was a prototype for Pentonville prison in North London and for prisons in America, such as the Cherry Hill Penitentiary in Philadelphia. It took three years to build and the budget allocated was £1,650. The first builder went bust trying to keep within the price and the architect William Blackburn, who died during the project, called in a second builder from London. Blackburn’s brother-in-law, William Hobson, completed the jail in 1791.
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The first inmate arrived on November 18 that same year. Joseph Marshall was a 19-year-old labourer convicted of stealing a spade. There was no segregation and over the years women were incarcerated for lewdness or petty theft. The crimes committed by male prisoners included desertion, fraud, embezzlement, assault and battery and murder. Child convicts aged as young as 8 were punished by being birched or whipped with a cat-o’-nine-tails and were sometimes placed in solitary confinement. Records show that between 1837 and 1838 three babies were born in the jail but only one survived.
Despite the jail’s dismal history, Jones says: “It’s not at all scary in any shape or form.” But then you might expect this to be said by someone who is the owner of the Crime Through Time museum, a private collection of items associated with crime and punishment, sleaze and scandal over the centuries. Items range from stocks, gibbets and guillotines to Ronnie Kray’s knuckleduster and a bust of Hitler. Because of Jones’s obsession with his collection and his desire to show it to the public (who are suitably warned that some of the exhibits are macabre and not to everyone’s taste) the jail provides a judicious home for the display and his family.
He and Nicola and their children Dean, 21, Luke, 19, Kirsty, 13, Tasmin, 11, and twins Ross and Isabel, 3, are untroubled by the jail’s unsavoury past. “It’s a safe haven for the family — one that we treasure greatly,” says Jones.