Visited April 2024

Location	Gloucester
Entrance Fee	Yes
Railway Station Nearby	Yes- Gloucester 1 mile
Parking	Yes
Facilities	Toilets
Map

Review

This is not exactly Gloucester Castle in the conventional sense as it was completely demolished in the 1780's to make way for a new prison. The prison was then in use until 2013 when it was decommissioned, and archaeology was carried out which located some of the remains of the old castle. 

Today the site of the prison is run as an event space and it offers tours on selected weekends. 

The castle was built shortly after the Norman Invasion, as a simple motte and bailey construction. It was enlarged further over the years, and in the reign of Henry III it became a royal residence and he stayed there many times. During this era a bridge across the River Severn was constructed to link the castle barbican with the castle meadows on the other side of the river. Both the barbican and the meadows are remembered by place names which still exist in current-day Gloucester.

Eventually though, the castle stopped being properly maintained and fell into disrepair. By the time Richard III visited Gloucester in 1483, the castle was very much in ruins and it would not have been suitable for the king to stay in.

Prisoners had been kept there from about 1183 even though at that time it was still a royal residence. However, as the castle deteriorated and was no longer fit for kings, it increased the number of prison inmates, until the castle became used solely as a prison for debtors.

By the 1700s the outer curtain wall had been demolished and the stone re-used, and only the keep remained as the main part of Gloucester Gaol. In 1787 it was decided that the old keep was not worth maintaining, even as a gaol, so it was demolished and a purpose built prison was built on its site; this opened in 1791 and was in use as a prison, with various extensions and new builds, until 2013 when it finally closed.

After the prison closure the archaeologists went in and found the remains of the keep under the concrete layers of the former basketball court, but this has now been covered over again. Planning permission exists to turn the building into apartments, but at the time of our visit in 2024 the work had not started and the prison buildings are open to the public as a tourist attraction, by tour only.

We took the tour and learned a lot about the old castle and the prison itself. The tour is currently 2.5 hours long, which is admittedly a long time but there is a lot to see. Children are allowed on the tour, and there were quite a few on the day we went- they all seemed to cope well and found enough to keep them occupied. However, parts of the tour take-in areas where prisoners would have been hanged, and some of the stories about former inmates can be a bit gruesome so consider carefully if you think your children would be ok with that. The tours are conducted by a former governor of the prison so the stories are authentic.

It was a very interesting and unusual day out to a castle in a place where a castle doesn't exist anymore, yet is still retained in some way in the subsequent buildings. There are also ghost-hunting tours in the prison if that is your interest, but I cannot say if they are any good or not as nothing would induce me to be in that building after dark!

More info:  Gloucester Prison