Bodmin Jail

Bodmin Jail was built in 1779 on a hill above the town of Bodmin — not out on the moor — to a design by the military engineer Sir John Call, following John Howard's prison report; it was among the first English prisons to give every inmate a cell of their own. Howard inspected it himself in 1784 and called it a monument to the county's humanity; returning in 1788 he found the women crowded together while the rooms opposite stood empty. The attraction counts 55 executions at the jail between 1802 and 1909. The last public hanging in Cornwall was John Doidge's, on 18 August 1862; after the Capital Punishment Amendment Act 1868 every execution here was carried out in private, including those of Selina Wadge in 1878 and William Hampton in 1909, the last person hanged in the county. The prison emptied of civilian men in 1916 and closed in 1927. Today the Grade II listed buildings are a paid attraction and a hotel, run by an operator that states in its own FAQ that genuine paranormal activity happens on a regular basis — and charges £50 a head to come and look for it.

Bodmin Jail exists because of a book. In 1777 the reformer John Howard published The State of the Prisons in England and Wales, an inventory of filth, gaol fever and extortion gathered county by county; Cornwall responded with an Act and a new building. The design was drawn by Sir John Call, a Cornish magistrate and former military engineer, on the principle Howard had argued for — that every prisoner should sleep in a room of their own. The labour was supplied by prisoners of war. The gaol was first inhabited in June 1779. Howard came to inspect his own idea. His entry for the County Gaol at Bodmin, printed in 1784, is the earliest description we have of the building and it settles a detail that later writers keep getting wrong: "This new gaol is built on a fine eminence, at a little distance from the town, where there is a constant current of water." Not on the moor — on a hill above Bodmin, with water piped through every ward. He recorded cells of about 8 feet 2 inches by 5 feet 8, each with a bedstead, a straw bed, two blankets and a coverlet; two infirmary rooms with three condemned cells underneath them; baths in two of the courts; and, in the middle of the gaoler's house, "a turret with an alarm-bell and clock" — the tower that still stands over the roofline today. He judged that the gentlemen of the county "have erected a monument of their humanity". Nine years later he came back, and the tone changes completely. Of his visit of 26 June 1788 he wrote: "This gaol was not so clean, nor in such order as at my former visits; the gaoler, as I understand, having many avocations. The women felons and petty offenders were crowded together, though the opposite rooms were all empty. The chaplain's curate, who has but a small salary, too seldom attends." The reforming ideal had lasted less than a decade, and the first people to lose by it were the women. The building kept failing and kept being enlarged. Overcrowded during the Napoleonic wars, extended repeatedly, declared unfit for purpose in 1850 and then largely rebuilt between 1856 and 1861 as a prison of some 220 cells. From 1887 part of it was taken over as a naval prison, an overflow from the Royal Navy's establishment at Plymouth, housed in the former women's wing. Executions are what the place is now sold on, and the chronology of them is precise. Before 1802 Cornwall hanged people at Bodmin Common. From 1802 the gallows moved to the field in front of the gaol — the first recorded hangings there were John Vanstone and William Lee, executed for burglary on 1 September 1802. The drop over the main gate was later condemned by the Inspector of Prisons on the grounds that the gate faced north-east and the hangings were not public enough; it was moved to the south wall so that the crowd could watch from Asylum Hill. When the brothers James and William Lightfoot were hanged on 13 April 1840 for the murder of the merchant Nevell Norway, a crowd put at some 25,000 gathered, and a railway company ran a special train whose 1,100 passengers watched from the carriages. That ended by statute. The Capital Punishment Amendment Act 1868 required executions to be carried out inside prisons. The change is visible in the local press within weeks of taking effect on a Cornish case: writing on 9 August 1878, the Royal Cornwall Gazette noted that "under the new Act, the ghastly proceedings take place in comparative privacy within the precincts of the gaol". In Cornwall the last public execution had already happened six years earlier: John Doidge, hanged outside Bodmin Jail on 18 August 1862 by William Calcraft for the killing of Roger Drewe after a pub brawl, before a crowd the attraction estimates at six to eight thousand. Selina Wadge was therefore not part of that spectacle, and neither was William Hampton. Wadge was about 28, the daughter of a labourer at Altarnun, unmarried, with two illegitimate sons; she had been living at the Launceston workhouse because her parents could not keep her. In June 1878 she drowned her younger boy, Harry, who was two, weakly and unable to walk, in a well. Her Home Office file survives at Kew as HO 45/9464/75879. Tried at the Cornwall Summer Assizes before Mr Justice Denman, she was convicted in forty-five minutes by a jury that recommended mercy. A memorial to the Home Secretary, Richard Assheton Cross, "has been numerously signed and forwarded", the Royal Cornwall Gazette reported, and the chaplain of the asylum and the vicar of Bodmin wrote to him separately urging him to spare her. His refusal reached Bodmin on the morning she died. The execution, delayed from the Monday because the executioner William Marwood had another engagement at Nottingham, was carried out at eight o'clock on Thursday 15 August 1878. "The first execution in Cornwall since the abolition of public executions," the Gazette began, "was consummated this (Thursday) morning within the walls of her Majesty's Prison at Bodmin. The utmost privacy was observed, none but the officials of the gaol being allowed admission." Outside, "small knots of people had gathered without the walls, but their morbid taste was not gratified with anything beyond a view of the fatal flag and the deep tolling of the prison bell". She was buried inside the prison. Her case has since been the subject of a peer-reviewed study — Tamar Hager, "Justice, Morality or Politics: why did the British legal system execute Selina Wadge?", Women's History Review 26:3 (2017), 455–476 — which sits behind a paywall and which we have not read; the account above rests on the contemporary press and the catalogue entry for her Home Office file. William Hampton was the last. His file, HO 144/1037/180624, is dated 24 June 1909 and reads simply: "Criminal: Hampton, William; Court: Bodmin; Offence: Murder; Sentence: Death." He was convicted of strangling Emily Tredrea, described in every account as his girlfriend. A petition said to carry more than three thousand signatures was rejected, and he was hanged at eight in the morning on 20 July 1909. It was the last execution at Bodmin and the last in Cornwall; afterwards, Cornish capital cases went to Exeter. The prison then emptied by stages: the women's section closed in 1911, the last civilian men left in July 1916, the naval prisoners were the last inmates and their section closed in the early 1920s, and the prison was formally decommissioned in 1927. Cornwall has had no prison since. The buildings were auctioned to demolition contractors who took down the smaller structures and tried dynamite on the wings, but the walls were over a metre thick in places and would not come down. What followed was a century of improvised uses — fishmongers, a car garage, a badminton court, and from the 1930s the '99 Club', a cabaret venue, casino and nightclub that also staged mock executions. Later there was a museum and a pub, and professional wrestling in the courtyard. In 2004 a local family, the Whetens, began proper restoration; in 2015 the Tudor Hotels Collection took the project on, and the hotel and the present attraction opened in 2021.

Bodmin Jail is open, and it is a commercial attraction. The address is Berrycoombe Road, Bodmin, Cornwall PL31 2NR — satnav users are told to enter PL31 2PY — and the telephone is 01208 76292. It is run by Bodmin Jail Museum Ltd (company number 06776084), which was still filing as an active company in March 2026. Entry is by timed slot and the operator asks visitors to arrive ten minutes early; allow 1.5 to 2 hours. Prices (checked August 2026). Self-guided entry from £13.50 booked online, £16.50 on the door, with family tickets available; it includes the immersive Dark Walk. A guided tour with one of the heritage guides starts at £17.00. The lantern-lit Ghost Walk starts at £15.00 and is for ages 12 and over. The overnight paranormal investigation, After Dark, is £50.00 per person, ages 18 and over; you may bring your own equipment, alcohol and drugs are prohibited, and warm layers and sturdy shoes are advised — no stilettos or open-toed shoes. Getting there. The jail is a couple of minutes from the town centre and signed with brown tourism signs. There is no free parking at the jail: the operator directs visitors to the paid Berrycoombe Car Park, a five-minute walk away, and asks explicitly that nobody parks on the road or the grass verges outside, out of consideration for neighbours. Local buses stop in Bodmin town, a ten-minute walk, and are frequent only in high season. The nearest mainline station is Bodmin Parkway, four miles outside the town, from which you need a bus or a taxi. The Camel Trail cycle route from Padstow through Wadebridge ends at the jail; bike racks are limited. Coaches drop off on Berrycoombe Road and park in the coach bay alongside the hotel wall. Access. There is a 7-metre incline on the final approach to the entrance, and visitors with mobility difficulties can be dropped at the front gate. The entrance courtyard is gravelled with solid even routes. The route drops to the lowest level by stairs or a platform lift, runs level through the Dark Walk, then rises again by stairs or a second platform lift, with ramps and slopes beyond. Some original doorways are only 75 cm wide; anyone with a wide wheelchair or pram should ring first. One accessible WC is on the Naval Wing level. A free carer ticket is available on request with proof. Parts of the attraction carry a photosensitive-epilepsy warning, and there are dark, cramped sections, loud noises and lighting effects — the operator advises parental guidance. At the time of writing one of the lifts was out of service. Assistance dogs are welcome throughout; other dogs are not allowed in the museum route but are welcome in the courtyard, the Moor Café, the gift shop and the hotel. Staying. The Bodmin Jail Hotel occupies the converted cell wings at Scarlett's Well Road, Bodmin PL31 2PL (01208 822 822), operated by Bodmin Jail Hotel Ltd (company number 09861358, also active as of March 2026). Rooms are converted cells of about 30 m² with king or twin beds, including family and accessible rooms; the restaurant is in the former chapel. It is a separate business from the attraction and is booked separately. One thing to hold on to while you are there. Selina Wadge, William Hampton, John Doidge, the Lightfoot brothers and the fifty-odd others were real people, several of them very poor, and at least two of them were buried in the ground you walk over. The building is worth the visit for its architecture and its penal history alone.