Crumlin Road Gaol
Prisoners at Crumlin Road Gaol went to court without ever stepping outside, via a tunnel under the road. Belfast's Victorian jail held suffragettes, IRA escapers and 17 hanged men.
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Quick Facts
- Location
- Crumlin Road, north Belfast
- Built
- Constructed 1843–1845; first prisoners admitted in 1846
- Architect
- Charles Lanyon
- Design
- Radial plan with wings fanning out from a central hub, modelled on London's Pentonville Prison
- Closed
- 1996
- Executions
- 17 men hanged between 1854 and 1961
- Famous feature
- A tunnel beneath the road linking the gaol to the courthouse
- Today
- Visitor attraction and events venue
The jail with its own underpass
The first thing to know about Crumlin Road Gaol is the tunnel. Beneath the road runs a passage connecting the prison to the Crumlin Road Courthouse opposite, so defendants could be moved to trial without crossing a public street. It was a sensible piece of security rather than a secret escape route, which is the myth people tend to attach to it. It was built to keep prisoners in, and it did that job for well over a century. The courthouse and gaol face each other like a pair of grim bookends, and the tunnel is one of the details visitors remember longest.
Lanyon's Victorian machine
The gaol was designed by Charles Lanyon, the architect behind much of Victorian Belfast, including Queen's University's Lanyon Building. It was built between 1843 and 1845 and took in its first prisoners in 1846. Its model was Pentonville in London, then the last word in prison design. Wings fan out from a central hub, known as the Circle, so that officers standing in the middle could watch every landing. The idea was control through constant observation, with prisoners kept apart from each other in individual cells. The exterior is deliberately imposing, with a gatehouse that looks more like a fortress than a public building. It was meant to be seen, and to put people off crime.
Seventeen men and the walk to the gallows
Between 1854 and 1961, seventeen men were hanged inside the gaol. The condemned cell sat close to the execution chamber, an arrangement visitors can still see today. Those executed were buried within the prison grounds in unmarked graves, as was standard practice. The last man to be hanged here was Robert McGladdery, in December 1961. Capital punishment for murder in Northern Ireland was abolished in 1973, nearly twelve years later. The gaol had a long record before that point too. Over the decades it held men, women and, in its earlier years, children.
Suffragettes, preachers and paramilitaries
Few prisons in these islands have held such a mixed roll of inmates. Suffragettes were imprisoned here in the years before the First World War, and some went on hunger strike. The Rev. Ian Paisley served a short sentence here in 1966. The gaol's busiest and bleakest chapter came during the Troubles. Republican and loyalist prisoners were held here, including many interned without trial from 1971, and the place became badly overcrowded. Escapes are part of the story as well. On 15 January 1943, four IRA prisoners escaped from the gaol, including Hugh McAteer.
From closure to visitor attraction
The gaol closed in 1996, after roughly 150 years of continuous use. For some years it sat empty and decaying, a landmark that many in north Belfast passed daily but few had ever entered. Restoration turned it into a visitor attraction and venue, opening to the public in 2012. It now hosts tours, exhibitions and events, with the building itself as the main exhibit. For anyone interested in how Belfast treated crime, politics and conflict, it offers a rare view of all three under one roof.
What to look out for
Start in the Circle, the hub from which the wings radiate. Standing there, you can see exactly how the design was meant to work. Look at the cells, which are small and hard, and then at the tunnel to the courthouse. Don't miss the condemned cell and the execution chamber, which are sobering rather than sensational. If you can, take in the courthouse across the road as well. The two buildings tell the story of a whole justice system, from arrest to sentence to cell.
Notable people
- Charles Lanyon
- Robert McGladdery
- Hugh McAteer
- Ian Paisley
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