Bullwood Hall Borstal / HM Prison, Hockley, Essex
Bullwood Hall was a purpose-built closed female Borstal Institution, opened in 1962 at the south side of High Road at Hockley, Essex. The establishment, which cost £300,000, replaced existing borstals at Durham, Manchester and Cardiff. Up to eighty young women, aged between 16 and 21, were housed within its 12-feet-high walls topped with barbed wire.
In its early years, Bullwood Hall gained a reputation as being a 'tough girls' institution and there were frequent reports of smashed windows, damaged cells, and violence between inmates or by inmates towards staff.
In around 1983, the site became Her Majesty's Prison Bullwood Hall, housing up to forty women inmates.
In 2006, it was announced that, due to a shortage of male prison places, the Bullwood Hall was to be converted into a Category C male prison.
The prison was closed at the end of March 2013, one of seven UK prisons that were closed at around that time. In 2015, site was then sold for redevelopment as a housing estate. The old prison buildings have now been demolished.
Records
Note: many repositories impose a closure period of up to 100 years for records identifying individuals. Before travelling a long distance, always check that the records you want to consult will be available.
- The National Archives, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, TW9 4DU. Holdings include: Inspectors' reports (1969-75).
- The National Archives, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, TW9 4DU. Has a wide variety of crime and prison records going back to the 1770s, including calendars of prisoners, prison registers and criminal registers.
- Find My Past has digitized many of the National Archives' prison records, including prisoner-of-war records, plus a variety of local records including Manchester, York and Plymouth. More information.
- Prison-related records on
Ancestry UK
include Prison Commission Records, 1770-1951
, and local records from London, Swansea, Gloucesterhire and West Yorkshire. More information.
- The Genealogist also has a number of National Archives' prison records. More information.
Bibliography
- Fox, Lionel W The English Prison and Borstal Systems (1952, Routledge & Kegan Paul)
- Behan, Brendan Borstal Boy (1958, Hutchinson)
- Hutton, John Portland Borstal Institutution Miscellany Volume 2 (2018)
- Lodge, Jeremy Lowdham Grange. Borstal! (2014)
Links
- Prison Oracle - resources those involved in present-day UK prisons.
- GOV.UK - UK Government's information on sentencing, probation and support for families.
Except where indicated, this page () © Peter Higginbotham. Contents may not be reproduced without permission.