The hexagonal central hall of HM Prison Wandsworth
Her Majesty’s Prison Wandsworth stands in plain sight on Heathfield Road in SW18. Its squat twin towers of grey stone and false portcullis vaguely evoke a castle – in this case designed to keep those outside safe from those inside. It remains one of the biggest prisons in Europe. Its interior secrets are modest but fascinating, representing an unknown world for most people.
It dates back more than 150 years, being built on High Victorian principles. It was certainly not designed as a dungeon, and represented a great humane step forward from the horrors of cruelty and corruption in prisons such as the old Newgate, or transportation to Australia. From the start, Wandsworth provided each prisoner with a cell, water and lavatory – a facility that was withdrawn in 1870 when cell capacity had to be increased. In those early years, solitary confinement was the standard regime, no association of prisoners being allowed.
Wandsworth is often a described a ‘Panopticon’ prison, but that is at best only partly true. Panopticon design means that the prisoners can be watched constantly, or at least given the notion that they were being constantly watched. An observation point at a central position provides the prison officers with the ability to see all the cells, placed outwards from it and, ideally, kept in darkness. Jeremy Bentham, the English social reformer and philosopher, proposed the concept in the 1780s for the design of a national penitentiary for England, but his idealized design was hard to put into practice and it was never built. One of the earliest applications close to the Panopticon principle turned out to be the Eastern Penitentiary in Philadelphia, built in 1829. In this prison, the cells radiated in long galleries from a central hub, like spokes from a wheel. The first like this in England was Pentonville in 1842, with Wandsworth, designed by Birmingham architect Daniel Hill, following in 1851. The prison became HM Prison Wandsworth in 1878 as part of the first national prison service.
Wandsworth has a classic layout, comprising two main buildings with radiating three-storey wings. The largest building comprises five wings, A to E. The smaller three-wing building, originally for women prisoners, is the Onslow Centre, holding 330 prisoners. Wandsworth must accept all suitable prisoners from courts in its catchment area: South London and Surrey, and has a Category B security classification. Its maximum capacity is 1,665, having started with cells for 700 in 1851, the normal level of accommodation being 1,107, most being prisoners at the start of their sentences. The main buildings have never been extended. There are textile workshops operated by prisoners, including a carpet-recycling facility, a laundry and a small allotment garden with two greenhouses, and a formidable outer wall.
Prisoners’ gardens and allotments, where chickens are kept.
Around a quarter of British prison capacity in 2014 is in nineteenth-century buildings built close to the centre of cities. Many have struggled with overcrowding. Wandsworth, with its cell door observation hatches, thickly painted brickwork, ironwork stairs and landings, is typical. Viewed from central area, rather than from a cell, the overall visual effect is light and airy, but all these older prisons require high levels of property maintenance. Wandsworth has clearly made strenuous efforts to improve, after struggling through a patch when it gained the reputation of being the ‘Hate Factory’, and a scandal over the spinning of statistics by shuffling prisoners off to other jails before official inspections. All wings have had in-cell sanitation since 1996 and in-cell electricity is installed throughout the prison.
Wandsworth still retains a grim legacy in several respects. There have been 135 executions on various gallows up until 1961, including the last man to be hanged in England for treachery, William Joyce, alias Lord Haw-Haw, in 1946. Ronnie Biggs the train robber escaped from here in 1965.
It is tempting to dismiss Wandsworth as a dinosaur, but there are no plans to close it, and the underlying elements of its design are still respected by prison officials. While the galleries themselves are antiquated, the latest prison designs call for ‘optimal sight lines’ for better utilization of staff and leaner manning. Some believe that the contact between prisoners and staff, and the safety of staff, is best in a radial prison. Prisons from the 1960s have been built on T-shaped blocks, or with triangular layouts, not always successfully, but the accommodation blocks of Britain’s newest prison, Oakwood in Staffordshire, consist of five arms radiating from a central point, quite recognisably similar to Wandsworth.
Prisoner’s cell in E Wing.