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Local Lock-Up

Do you want to know more about the old lock-up which still stands in your parish? Perhaps you want to find out about a foreboding structure you noticed when passing through a village? Did your town ever have a lock-up which was used to restrain the local riff-raff? What was it like to be locked up in the local lock-up?

Use the search below to find detailed records on more than 500 lock-ups dating as far back as the 16th century including their locations, historical and contemporary descriptions, images, and sources to find out more about them.

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About

Your Local Lock-Up is a public engagement project which seeks to collate data on historic structures in local communities used to confine those accused of crime and disorderly behaviour between c.1500 and 1999. At present, it contains information, including images and historic descriptions, on over 500 lock-ups, police stations, cells in courthouses and stocks.

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Is there a surviving lock-up in your community? Or, do you know, through written or oral sources, that there was one which has now been abolished? Perhaps you have seen a structure that was used for confinement or restraint in the past when out for a walk or on holiday? If so, we would love to know about it. We welcome information about new lock-ups that do not yet appear in the database, and any additional information about those we already know existed.

Submit a Lock-Up

Contribute

Keen to contribute to this project? We’d love to have your help and input. We rely heavily on those who are willing to give some of their time to submit information about multiple lock ups, or to provide stories about how the data collected can be used to tell us more about the local experience of criminal justice in the past and the continuing significance of these historic monuments to local communities.

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