Newcastle Gaol

The New Gate, previously known as Berwick Gate was one of the most formidable gates on the town wall of Newcastle, similar in design to Pilgrim Gate and West Gate. In 1390 a barbican was added to increase the strength, from then it became known as the Newgate. In 1399 it was turned into a gaol. 

In 1820, the Newgate gaol was deemed "as being out of repair, and inconvenient, insufficient and insecure". An application was made to Parliament for building a new Gaol and a new House of Correction. The architect was John Dobson - his most important civic enterprise. The ceremony of laying the foundation stone took place on 4th June 1823. Cost just over £35,000. 

 
The gaol contained an elliptical building for the residence of the keepers in order that they could inspect unseen the radiating wings of the prison. The building was enclosed by a thick wall, 25 feet tall. The entrance was a strong tower on the west side, in which was an arched gateway 14 feet high. Above the outer entrance, was a stone on to which the town's coat of arms was to be inscribed. Two gates secured the entrance with a porter's lodge in between them. The viewing vestibule was ascended by steps in the centre tower. On the ground floor there was a coal cellar, wash house and storeroom. There was a committee room and living quarters and office for the governor, apartments for the prison matron and keeper of the house of correction. The gaol also had a chapel. 

Newcastle gaol was a detached radial prison, a design which was employed for most large-scale prisons built between 1800 and 1835. It consisted of a number of wings (Newcastle's had 6) arranged around a central building which contained the governor's accomodation, the committee room and the chapel. The hub was polygonal or circular (Newcastle's was elliptical) in plan to allow the supervision of the yards around the house. Each wing contained dayrooms and workrooms on the ground floor with sleeping cells above. They were attached to the central block by iron walkways that allowed direct access from the sleeping cells to the chapel. The wings normally held two classes of inmate separated by a spine wall. The 'treadmill' labelled on Oliver's map of 1830 refers to a treadwheel. Sir William Cubitt had patented a new type of treadwheel in 1818, on which prison inmates walked around the exterior of a cylinder on a series of steps. By 1824 there were at least 75 wheels in 49 prisons. The treadwheels were used to create power to gind floor, pump water and to create unproductice labour. Some wheels were purely punitive. The 1823 Gaol Act specified that inmates sentenced to hard labour had to work a maximum of 10 hours a day. A treadwheel survives in the former gaol at Beaumaris in Wales. Further wings were added at Newcastle Gaol during the 1850s and early 1860s and another in 1871.

After 1844 hangings took place at the Newcastle Gaol, in full public sight on top of the wall facing Carliol Street. Patrick Forbes was executed 24th August 1850 and it is reported that some 16,000 members of the public attended to watch the spectacle.

The last public was that of George Vass (19) on 14th March 1863. Vass had brutally sexually assaulted and murdered Margaret Jan Doherty at the rear of Stowell Street early on New Years morning. The last hanging in Newcastle occurred at the Gaol (then known as HM Prison Newcastle) on 26th November 1919, when Ambrose Quinn was executed. He was hung at 09.15 but at 08.00 on the same day Ernest Bernard Scott had also been executed. 

Prisoners from the Gaol executed after 1829 were buried within the Gaol, altogether 14 persons met their deaths at the end of a rope and were buried in the prison.

The gaol closed in 1925 and was demolished.

Rumour has it that there were 14 trees planted to the eastern side of the Telephone Exchange (which replaced the Gaol) on Carliol Square, and these were meant to represent the 14 bodies exhumed and moved during demolition.