The Clink Prison Museum

My friends Gemma and Elizabeth, like me, are history geeks and when we got together in London we decided to go to a couple of museums. The Clink Prison Museum had been on our radar for a while, so when we met on Bankside we decided to venture over to London Bridge to check it out.

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The entrance to The Clink Prison Museum

The museum is built on the site of the original Clink Prison, which dates back to 1144. The prison supposedly got its name from the clinking sound the prisoners’ chains made as they jangled together, and the name became a nickname for prisons all over the country. For over 600 years the prison housed debtors, drunkards, heretics, prostitutes and other criminals within Southwark, an area notorious for being morally dubious – everything that was banned in the more staid City across the river took place here instead.

History

The prison was originally established as two separate prisons, one for men and one for women, in the grounds of Winchester Palace, the residence of the Bishop of Winchester. Henry of Blois, brother to King Stephen, became Bishop in 1129 and his palace, of which only the wall of the Great Hall containing the Rose Window is still visible today, was completed in 1144. Bankside was subject to the laws of “the Liberty of the Bishop of Winchester”, later “the Liberty of the Clink”.

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The Bishop of Winchester
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Ring buddies!

Notable criminals housed within the Clink at various points include Sir Thomas Wyatt the Younger, who rebelled against Queen Mary I; Royalist supporters during the English Civil War; and Puritans who ended up settling in the New World as Pilgrim Fathers. However, hundreds of ordinary people were imprisoned here, though often the only record we have is a name. The museum website lists several examples, including the wonderfully named prostitute Prusanna Carnall (imprisoned 1661) and William Albaster, imprisoned in 1599 for refusing to attend church (!).

Attempts were made to destroy the prison during the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381 and Jack Cade’s rebellion in 1450; after each occasion the Clink was rebuilt, with the final two-storey prison occupying the current site of the museum. The end came during the Gordon Riots in 1780: Lord George Gordon, angry that Catholics had been granted favours in the new “Papists Act”, gathered together members of the Protestant Association and, among other things, broke into the Clink, burned it to the ground and released all the prisoners (none of whom, thankfully, were ever recaptured). Today, the remains of the Clink consist of the Winchester Palace stonework, the passage called Clink Street, and the structure preserved within the museum itself.

My Experience

We arrived at the Clink at about eleven on a Saturday morning. We entered down the steps and were greeted cheerily by a costumed assistant (who, we found out later, was also manning the gift shop round the other side). We paid our entry fee and entered. The museum is atmospherically contained in a dingy basement; some of the structure was part of the original Clink. Evil-looking waxworks were dotted about, representing blacksmiths, gaolers and unfortunate prisoners.

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An evil-looking blacksmith prepares to shackle a prisoner

Information boards displayed lots of interesting facts about the Clink, but in some cases they didn’t look very professional – there were some glaring spelling errors including, in one case, the misspelling of the word “prisoners”. Having said that, I learned a lot from them: the boards gave information about the history of the Clink, the prisoners kept here and the punishments used. As we went round the museum we noticed that the information was sometimes a little disjointed, although it did follow an approximate chronological order.

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During high tide, the Thames would flood the Clink to this level – extremely unpleasant for the prisoners
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Prisoner begging through the gaol window
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Prisoner trapped in the waterlogged oubliette

The museum concentrated on the kinds of punishments used – the oubliette, the stocks and other forms of torture – and I thought that this was rather a shame. It seemed as though the curators were trying to sensationalise the prison and turn the museum into something like the London Dungeon. I felt that they missed their chance to create a more “serious” but really worthwhile museum about the rich history of the Clink.

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Infamous prisoner who would apparently fatten up rats and live off them…
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During the English Civil War, several Royalists were imprisoned in the Clink

That said, I did enjoy my visit, and it was certainly an experience. I wouldn’t recommend going alone, though!

FACTS

Address: 1 Clink Street, London, SE1 9DG

Website: clink.co.uk

Opening Hours: 10am-6pm (winter)/9pm (summer), 7 days a week

Prices: £7.50 adults, £5.50 children/concessions

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