The main entrance of the prison was flanked to the right by the Governor’s House and to the left by the Surgeon’s House. The western part of the prison included an Infirmary and a separate Petty Officer’s Prison. In the central market place prisoners could trade with outside traders. Internal walls divided the prison into a number of sections. As described in Risdon’s Survey of Devon (1811), and illustrated by two views by Samuel Prout (18), by a print published in Ackermann’s Repository of 1810, by two engravings of 1815, one illustrating the massacre of rioting American inmates in that year, and by a survey drawing of the prison of 1847, Dartmoor Prison consisted of five blocks laid out in a radial arrangement around a central market place, in total covering c12ha and surrounded by a double, circular perimeter wall. The first inmates were not received until, and by June that year it housed 5000 prisoners of war. Works on Dartmoor Prison started in the winter of 1805-6 and the foundation stone was laid on 20 March 1806. In response, the Admiralty built Dartmoor Prison in 1806-09 on land leased from the Duchy of Cornwall to designs by the London architect Daniel Asher Alexander (1768-1846).
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By 1805 the prisoner of war prisons at Norman Cross, Northamptonshire (1796-7, closed in 1816) and Stapleton near Bristol (1779) were full and a growing number of prisoners were held in hulks in Plymouth Harbour, in too close proximity to the arsenals at Plymouth. * Group value: the building forms part of an important and relatively complete group of listed prison buildings, together reflecting the historic development of HMP Dartmoor and its distinctive radial plan form as first envisaged in 1806-9.ĭuring the American War of Independence (1775-1783) there were a large number of prisoner of war hulks at Chatham, Portsmouth and Plymouth and during the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) a total of 47 hulks were moored at these dockyards. *Ěrchitectural interest: it is a good and mostly intact example of an isolation wing of 1901 designed by the then Surveyor of Prisons, Alten Beamish * Historic interest: as an important part of the historic prison complex, representing an improvement to the prisoners' accommodation
The E wing at H M Prison Dartmoor, an isolation wing of 1901 designed in1897 by Alten Beamish is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons: A former isolation prison wing with attached exercise yards, completed in 1901 to designs of 1897 by Alten Beamish, Surveyor of Prisons, with late-C20 alterations.