Plans of county prisons

This series includes signed contract plans for the rebuilding and enlargement of the Middlesex county prisons - House of Correction in Cold Bath Fields, Westminster House of Correction in Tothill Fields, and Clerkenwell House of Detention or New Prison, Clerkenwell. Many of the contracts relating to this expansion may be found in the series MA/D/G (1661 - 1930), and more general plans of the prisons in the series MA/G, which also includes papers on the prisons' administration . MA/DCP/G/001 - 014 are signed contract plans for extensions and alterations (1858 - 1868); MA/DCP/G/015 - 027 are projected designs for the new Bridewell and never taken up, and later contract plans for warming and ventilating apparatus and for alterations; and MA/DCP/G/028 - 035 are signed contract plans for the rebulding of 1846, and for later alterations and extensions

The material is arranged in one series - MA/DCP/G/001 - 035

These records are available for public inspection, although records containing personal information are subject to access restrictions under the UK Data Protection Act, 2018

Originally Middlesex prisoners were kept in either of the City of London's gaols - Newgate or the Bridewell (near Blackfriars). In 1615 - 1616 a Middlesex Bridewell (also known as the Clerkenwell House of Correction) was built on a site between the present Corporation Row and Sans Walk (demolished in 1804). On the same site, adjacent and to the south of it, a House of Detention (for prisoners awaiting trial) was built in the late seventeenth century to ease the overcrowding in Newgate. This 'New Prison' was rebuilt in 1818, incorporating the site of the old Bridewell; and again in 1845; before being closed in 1877 and demolished in 1890, the Hugh Myddleton School being built on the site. A new Middlesex House of Correction had been built in 1794 in Coldbath Fields (on the present site of Mount Pleasant Post Office), and which was also closed in 1877, and demolished in 1889. Although debtors were one of the largest categories of prisoner, a separate gaol for them was not built in London until the beginning of the nineteenth century (in Whitecross Street); prior to this they were kept in Newgate.The Westminster Bridewell was in Howick Place until 1664, from which date it moved to Tothill Fields and became known as the Westminster House of Correction. In 1834 this prisand was replaced by a building in Francis Street, which in turn closed in 1877 when the inmates were transferred to the Millbank Penitentiary. There was also a prison in the Gatehouse of Westminster Abbey, at the western end of Tothill Street. Built in 1370 it had two gaols - one for clerics, and one for lay offenders, and was demolished in 1776 - 1777. Plans drawn up for contracts to be carried out on county properties, or architects' plans relating to the properties had to be submitted to the sessions for approval. Some of the plans were not accepted or adopted