Notorious Crumlin Road Gaol, Belfast - Martin McGuinness, Michael Stone, Bobby Sands spent time here

Today we’re visiting Crumlin Road Gaol, or as we called it ‘The Crum’. The Gaol was actually called HMP Belfast, but this is the Crumlin Road and obviously that’s lent its name to the Gaol.

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You can see the former Courthouse, the grand but derelict building on the left and then facing it on the right we have the old Victorian gaol constructed in 1846. There’s a tunnel running under the road here that was used to take remand prisoners directly from the Gaol to face their fate in the court room. And as we enter from the side of the Gaol, you get some idea of the security that existed here. Even by prison standards The Crum would had to have been doubly secure because of the role it played in incarcerating paramilitary prisoners during the Troubles.

IRA leader Martin McGuinness, later N. Ireland’s Deputy First Minister, notorious UDA member Michael Stone and the Republican hunger Striker Bobby Sands all spent time in here along with many other paramilitaries. And going back further, in 1924 Éamon de Valera spent a month in solitary confinement here after being arrested for entering N. Ireland illegally. He was later to become Ireland’s Taoiseach.

Now the prison closed in 1996 and it’s now a museum and events venue and it’s to see a concert that I’m visiting this evening, so we’ll be able to get inside and see a bit of the old Victorian architecture – It’s a grade A listed building. As you can see there’s lots of other people here for the same reason.

You might be surprised to learn that the prison was designed by Charles Lanyon, architect of the Queens University Lanyon Building amongst other notable Belfast constructions. The design was partly based on HMP Pentonville. It was built to house around 475 prisoners, but at a Red Cross inspection in 1971, while the place was used to intern prisoners without trail, they found 864 inmates. It would be pretty bleak if you’d been innocently interned here, as many people were, and had to live in those conditions.

We’re heading now to the main entrance to the prison. This is where it all starts to look a bit more theme park and less prison like. You can probably guess that during its time as a prison it wouldn’t have looked quite like this. You’ll notice the touristy signage and the new glass entrance added to the gate lodge for example, but you still get a feel of the robustness of the place with its severe and thick basalt stone walls. But, it’s great to see this building, that was presumably such a dark place in the past, being enjoyed now in its new capacity by Belfast’s citizens and tourists from all over the world. We’re now looking at the Governor’s corridor which leads down to the prison wings A, B, C and D, which fan out from The Circle – we’ll see that in a minute. But, first let’s look at the renovated Gate lodge, designed now presumably to welcome people rather than to put the fear of God in them. As we walk through you get a really good view of the Court House opposite, but as I mentioned earlier, prisoners would have been taken through the tunnel for their court appearances.

As we round the corner past the Café, it’s difficult to imagine the incarcerated having the use of these picnic tables to eat their lovely sandwiches.

This prison was built to replace Carrickfergus prison and in 1846 the first inmates, who were men women and children were marched in chains from Carrick to their new home her in the Crum. Many convicts were guilty of little else than having stolen some food – incarcerated effectively for being poor. The gaol also conducted executions and had gallows installed for this purpose. In total 17 people were executed here in the prison’s history, the last being in 1961.

Were now in what’s known as the Circle, the entrance to the prison’s 4 wings. As you can see it’s nicely lit tonight for this evening’s concert and the audience is gathering in expectation. While it’s an austere place, there’s also a beauty in the ironwork on the landings and the plastered archways. The Victorian’s were great builders.

Leaving the concert at the end of the night I have to reflect on the atmosphere a venue like that has.