Dartmoor with kids – featuring wild ponies and prisons

Because we hadn’t fitted quite enough activities into our 6 day holiday, we’d found a stables and booked a different kind of Dartmoor ponies activity, horse riding, for the last day for child 1. Overnight, it had crossed our minds that Dartmoor was famous for its prison. Google-mapped it to find it was a 17 minute drive from the stables. Was it still  in use? Were you allowed a drive by? We had to take a look. As we drew closer, we could see there was a prison museum opposite, behind an incongruously colourful array of garden gnomes and hedgehogs. We paid the £12 family entry and were generally entertained by stories of escapees, Kray connections, home-made tattoo kits and the confiscated weapon display.  They had pencilled a black eye onto the prisoner (shop dummy) to make it more realistic. 

There is an easy to miss downstairs area by way of a slotted plastic curtain, which looks like you are going into a butchers/body disposal acid bath area from the Sopranos. No photos are allowed, mainly because it is run by prisoners (who also make the colourful ornaments in their workshops, which explained the display outside).

Interesting  prison facts: The prison, built in 1815,  came into its own in 1850 when Australia stopped taking our convicts. Due to its remote location and harsh regime it housed the most dangerous Victorian criminals. But because it is a listed building, and the Council refused to give it planning permission to upgrade its security in 2001, it has recently been downgraded and only houses category C and D prisoners these days. Were sad to learn that is not the prison from Porridge.

You are allowed to pop down the road to photograph the prison itself as long as there are no people in the shot, or they will confiscate your film (if you are from the 1980’s, which presumably is when the sign was written).