Dartmoor part one - Doing porridge

I first read Conan-Doyle's fabulous Sherlock Holmes novel The Hound of the Baskervilles when I was nine, and although I've never been there, Dartmoor has loomed large in my imagination ever since. In my mind there are vast expanses of empty moor, shrouded in mist and punctuated with towering, rocky tors and trecherous, deadly bogs. You know what? In terms of the spirit of these three hundred and sixty eight square miles of mostly empty rock strewn hills Conan-Doyle got it pretty much right.

We were pitched up on a farm on the very edge of Dartmoor, and although when the sun came out the siren call of the coast rang loudly in our ears a day of exploration of this lofty expanse seemed equally attractive, so we directed the nose of the car in a northerly direction and set out to see what we could see. Actually, that's not true. The truth is that we'd come across a reference to what might be the ultimate hidden gem, and we were keen to go and see if it was as interesting as we thought it would be.

So it was that we found ourselves driving into the little town of Princetown, a frankly unprepossessing place that is totally dominated by what must surely be the moor's most famous landmark - Dartmoor Prison. This huge granite edifice looms - and that is the only word to use here - over the town, squatting on the skyline exuding menace, misery and dispair. It's hard to think of a less inviting place, and yet it was the prison that had brought us here.

Well, that's not quite true. We were actually there to  investigate the Dartmoor Prison Museum, which occupies buildings just outside the prison's fence which used to be part of the prison dairy. We drove up the hill, out of the town, past the main gate of the prison itself before turning in to the museum car park. I have to say, you don't get a real sense of the size of the place from there. As you get out of your car and approach the main entrance you  are confronted with what appears to be a smallish stone building, about the size of your average porta-cabin, with a vast array of brightly painted concrete garden ornaments clustered around the door.

Once through the door you find yourself in a fairly dark and haphazard space, surrounded by various handmade crafts and more of the brightly painted concrete garden ornaments.  Yes, like many museums, the Dartmouth Prison Museum has the visitor enter and leave through the gift shop. There are the usual mugs and keyrings which are presumably purchased at the "generic museum gift shop wholesale warehouse" but the craft items - many of which are exquisitely beautiful - are made by inmates. The museum houses many of the prisoner's creations in other areas as well, about which more later...

I have to say, the museum is one of the most fascinating I have ever visited - and we visit a lot of museums on our travels - well worth the three quid admission charge. The first displays outline the history of the prison itself - its origins as a Prisoner of War camp in the Napoleonic wars (it opened in 1809, and I guess that the prisoner made handicraft tradition started then) through the most well known phase of its existence as the ultimate high security gaol - the capacity in which it appears in stories by the likes of Conan-Doyle and Agatha Christie, to its current incarnation as a lower risk "Category C" prison. I hadn't known its security status had been downgraded, apparently because Her Majesty's Prison Service couldn't get planning permission to build a bigger fence.

I know. You couldn't make it up, could you.

There are also displays featuring the prison's more famous inmates and escapees - although most people in the latter category seem to have come to fairly sticky ends - as well as the methods employed by the prison regime to maintain security. I had no idea, for example, that as late as the nineteen sixties they'd had armed prison officers riding around the surrounding moorland on Dartmoor ponies.

There's also recognition of the strong connection between the Prison and the United States Navy, originating with the Prison's original role as a Prisoner of War institution. For two years between spring 1813 and spring 1815 around six and a half thousand American sailors taken prisoner during the hardly remembered "War of 1812" were held there. That's about ten times the number of men the place is currently permitted to hold - all I can say is that it must have been pretty cramped.

Towards the end of their tenure, on the sixth of April 1815, there was something of a massacre when guards opened fire on inmates trying to escape. Thirty-one men prisoners were wounded and seven were killed. They, along with two hundred and sixty four other of their comrades who also died during their incarceration are buried within the prison grounds. Their graves, and their memorial are tended by inmates and prison staff. The museum holds many letters and other items presented to the prison by various ships of the US Navy in recognition of these efforts and these symbols of reconciliation and comradeship are genuinely moving.

There is a much darker side to the museum though, because one thing it doesn't do is gloss over the point of the prison's existence. In its prisoner of war days the prison was a place of mere incarceration. Both French and American POWs had a fair degree of freedom and self determination within the confines of the walls. But once the POWs left and the place became a civilian gaol in 1851, things changed. Like all prisons, HMP Dartmoor is a place not just of incarceration, but also of punishment. As a rule, the men there would rather be elsewhere, and not all of them have been the type you'd happily introduce your sister to, or wish to meet in a dark alley.

To be frank, many of them have been criminals.

Historically, violent or uncooperative prisoners were dealt with in a brutal manner. In the centre of the museum's main room is a large wooden A frame, to which prisoners were once strapped and flogged. The museum also holds a rather gruesome Cat 'o Nine Tails with which these punishments were meted out. Obviously prisoners are no longer flogged in British Prisons, the practice having been banned in 1967 (which seems rather late, although hitting school children with sticks wasn't banned until the mid-eighties, which puts things in perspective a little). According to the internet flogging was discontinued before the ban, as early as 1962, but the museum seems to differ from this opinion, citing anecdotal evidence that prisoners were occasionally flogged at Dartmoor even after the ban.

Not that brutality has always been limited to the guards. The "black museum" section houses a wide variety of frankly ingenious but utterly terrifying weapons that have been discovered by prison staff during searches. Toothbrush handles sharpened to a point, or embedded with razor blades are only the star of it. There's everything from "shanks" to fake guns, knuckle dusters to coshes and all points in between.  My uncle was a prison officer for many years, and the two little display cases filled with such homespun malevolence made me realise the true nature of the risks he faced more than any of the hair raising tales with which he would occasionally regale us.

Downstairs from this section of the museum, in what I assume used to be cow sheds,  is a display of agricultural equipment from the prison farm, and room featuring a life sized recreation of a section of the prison's quarry - from which all of the stone to build the prison, and the buildings which house the museum was taken. Prisoners used to work in the Quarry, but it's been largely disused for many years - presumably because they can't get planning permission to build anything else!

The downstairs section of the museum also houses examples of truly impressive woodworking produced by prisoners. Very seriously high quality garden furniture and doors are available for sale at what would be insanely low prices were they in a garden centre or DIY store. I can't imagine why anybody from the locality would shop for such things anywhere else.  Obviously the manufacturer's circumstances preclude the possibility of any kind of delivery service, so you will have to collect, but if I ever find myself in the heart of Dartmoor again I can well imagine returning home with one of their finely crafted garden benches on my roofrack.

The final room of the museum is back up the stairs, and houses more of the prisoner's handiwork, both legitimate and otherwise. I was particularly impressed by the many boxes and containers made from matchsticks and other scraps. Most had been confiscated from the inmates who had created them because they also incorporated hidden draws designed to hide drugs, mobile phones and other contraband. I think my favourite of these was a coke can, the top of which had been made into a removable lid. The inside of the can had been lined with matchsticks to stop the items hidden inside making a rattling noise if the can was shaken. I found myself thinking that it was a crying shame that the men who had made these things, who were clearly possessed of great skill and ingenuity had not found some way to use their talents to enable them to live a law abiding life. It's sad, really.

Not every exhibit was so nefarious of course. My eye was particularly caught by a brightly coloured, fully functional electric guitar which I would have loved to have taken from its display case and had a bit of a strum on.

Because it is still part of the prison estate and - although this is not explicitly stated anywhere that I saw - I think staffed at least in part by inmates, all photography is banned, which is why there aren't any pictures in this instalment of the blog. I'm sad about this because I would have liked to have shown you some of the beautiful artwork and crafts on display. I guess you're just going to have to go and take a look for yourselves - it really is most highly recommended.