The House of Correction

at Folkingham

Folkingham, eight miles north of Bourne on the A15, is now merely a large village but it was once an important place in Lincolnshire because it was the seat of the Quarter Sessions, the higher court that dispensed justice for the area each fortnight from the Assembly Rooms at the Greyhound Hotel, which is why the austere House of Correction, or prison, was built there. The building that survives dates back to the early 19th century and replaced an earlier one with a prisoners' exercise yard at the rear that was in use from 1609 until 1808. It has since been converted into two private stone-roofed houses, Numbers 32 and 34, facing the spacious village market place on the east side.

It was here that lawbreakers were imprisoned and beneath the keeper's house were four tiny cells for men together with a "dark room" for those sentenced to solitary confinement, with only four small air holes in the door. There were also two cells nearby to accommodate women prisoners.

The village constable was responsible for keeping the prisoners occupied, one task being the cutting of cattle and horse troughs from solid blocks of stone quarried locally using a mallet and chisel. A bulletin of 1802 records that the keeper was then John Speight who was receiving a salary of £50 a year. This was a period when being poor was also a crime and those without means in Folkingham village for three years were granted a begging badge.

Conditions were deplorable and reform was inevitable. The English philanthropist John Howard, born at Hackney in London in 1726, had spent some time in jail at Brest in France as a prisoner of war in 1756 where he suffered and witnessed terrible hardships. Later, as High Sheriff of Bedfordshire, he was appalled by the conditions in Bedford Gaol and vowed to devote himself to prison reform. He subsequently toured British prisons including visiting the town jails at Boston and Stamford and the House of Correction at Folkingham where he witnessed the distressing sight of a woman prisoner nursing a child at her breast. She was serving a one-year sentence but the child died while its mother was still in custody. Food allowances were also a regular practice at Folkingham, amounting to 6d. worth of bread each week and Howard commented that the keeper "starves his prisoners" but his report does not mention the jail fever and smallpox that were rife in other such institutions.

Howard's investigations led to two Acts of Parliament in 1774 enforcing better conditions for prisoners and greater standards of cleanliness and the Howard League for Penal Reform that was founded in 1866 was named after him. 

The premises at Folkingham soon became totally inadequate for their purpose and in 1808, a new building was proposed on the Billingborough Road to plans drawn up by the architect Bryan Browning who was later to design Bourne Town Hall. The chosen site had previously been occupied by Henry de Beaumont's castle, with an inner and out moat, and most probably destroyed by Parliamentary forces during the Civil War of 1642-49. It was known as County Bridewell, or the second House of Correction, built for the County of Kesteven, and which was in use from 1809 until 1878. The only part that remains is the gatehouse and governor's house, now preserved at the end of an impressive driveway with wrought iron entrance gates, with the wording 

HOUSE OF CORRECTION A D 1825 

engraved below the pediment, the date being that of the first phase of extensions rather than the original building date. 

The gatehouse was intended to be a powerful apotropaeic, having the purpose of averting or turning away evil, and consists of a stone-faced building with three bays, arched windows half blanked off and half grilled, the sides and back being finished in brick. The centre is a deeply chamfered niche leading to a tunnel vaulted entrance at the end of which is a smaller doorway. The gateway is reminiscent of the style of Sir John Vanbrugh who had designed the final sections of the nearby Grimsthorpe Castle in 1715 and Browning may well have been influenced by his work.

Iron manacles were frequently used for securing unruly and troublesome prisoners at the House of Correction in Folkingham and this set has survived. It is now on display at the Heritage Centre at Baldock's Mill in Bourne.

Building started in 1808 and additions were made in 1825, 1849 and 1852 and it finally provided accommodation for 70 prisoners and prison officers. Inside there was a chapel and several punishment devices including a hand crank similar to a paddle wheel, a treadmill, a whipping post and stocks capable of holding three miscreants at a time. The entrance to the cells was through the dining room and the entire prison was surrounded by a high wall.

Henry Matsell of Bourne, a Lincolnshire policeman and Kesteven constable, was the last to live at the House of Correction. The jail was closed in 1878 and the remaining prisoners transferred elsewhere. However, the prison officers' quarters continued to be used for several years afterwards as temporary accommodation for homeless villagers. In recent times, it was bought by Arthur Peterson, a London civil servant, who had planned to turn it into his retirement home. The Historic Buildings Council awarded him a grant of £1,000 towards the cost of structural repairs but he was unable to raise the large sum of money needed for complete restoration before it could be considered habitable. The building was later acquired by the Landmark Trust, an organisation that seeks out unusual and empty properties throughout Britain and turns them into holiday accommodation with all mod cons and that is what has happened with the House of Correction that has became a favourite stopping place with visitors from America and Japan while the stocks and whipping post have been preserved in the west end of the nave of the village church. 

The House of Correction in 1909, from a postcard view taken by
the Bourne photographer Ashby Swift

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