Secrets Of Great British Castles - Season 2, Episode 5 Lancaster Castle
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00:00For me, a great British castle is a fortress, a palace, a home.
00:11And a symbol of power, majesty and fear.
00:16For nearly 1,000 years,
00:18castles have shaped Britain's famous landscape.
00:24These magnificent buildings have been home
00:27to some of the greatest heroes and villains in our national history.
00:32And many of them still stand proudly today,
00:35bursting with incredible stories of warfare,
00:39treachery, intrigue, passion and murder.
00:45Join me, Dan Jones,
00:47as I uncover the secrets behind six great British castles.
00:53This time, I'm in Lancaster Castle, in the heart of northern England,
00:58a castle which also houses one of the oldest jails and criminal courts in the land.
01:04Hundreds of people have died here at Lancaster,
01:07not in battles or in sieges, but in the name of British justice.
01:22It's not every day you find an abandoned 19th-century prison
01:34in the middle of a medieval castle.
01:37There's something that feels eerily familiar about it, though.
01:41It looks almost like a 1970s sitcom.
01:45I feel like I'm Ronnie Barker in Porridge.
01:48Norman Stanley Fletcher,
01:50you've pleaded guilty to the charges brought by this court.
01:54It's now my duty to pass sentence.
01:57For most of its history, imprisonment here was very real,
02:01and this place was deadly serious.
02:04The castle gained Lancaster the nickname of The Hanging Town.
02:09Although it began life as a bristling medieval fortress,
02:13over the centuries the castle became one of Britain's busiest and most brutal prisons.
02:19As well as a prison, the castle also contained a court
02:23where people came to be tried, punished and to die.
02:28Today, Lancaster Castle tells us the stories
02:31of more than 800 years of crime and punishment.
02:35And none is more famous than a trial that took place in the 20th century,
02:40following one of the worst terrorist attacks ever seen on mainland Britain,
02:45the bombing of two pubs in Birmingham.
02:48The tavern in the town under Mulberry Bush on the night of November 21st, 1974.
02:5321 people dead, more than 160 injured as the bombs went off.
02:58In June 1975, one of the most notorious trials in British history
03:04began right here at the Crown Court in the heart of Lancaster Castle.
03:09According to the Crown, the men planted their bombs in the rotunda...
03:12In the dock were a group of Northern Irishmen, accused of carrying out
03:16what was then the worst attack on British soil since the Second World War.
03:21The Birmingham pub bombings, which killed 21 and injured 182,
03:26were the latest in a string of bombings that had occurred across the country
03:31and they were suspected to be the work of the IRA.
03:34Six people have been charged as a result of...
03:38Like so many of the trials that took place here,
03:41the case of the Birmingham Six would be controversial.
03:45While they were on trial, the Birmingham Six were held in Lancaster Castle's cells.
03:51The country was living in daily fear of terrorism,
03:55but the Birmingham Six were innocent.
03:58For three months, they were taken back and forth from these cells
04:02to the castle's courtroom, knowing that they'd had nothing to do
04:06with the murderous attacks that had rocked the UK.
04:09Within two days, four of the six men had signed confessions,
04:13confessions which they said were brutally beaten out of them by police.
04:17These confessions would strongly influence the verdict.
04:21As a result, on the 15th of August 1975,
04:25they were found guilty here at Lancaster Castle.
04:29They were given a total of 21 life sentences for murder.
04:37But they were not guilty.
04:39They all served 16 years in British prisons
04:42before their convictions were overturned in 1991.
04:48The trial was one of the worst miscarriages of justice
04:51in modern British history,
04:53and it happened right here in Lancaster Castle.
04:58EXPLOSION
05:03The story of Lancaster Castle goes back over 2,000 years.
05:08The first people to build here were the Romans.
05:11In 43 AD, the Romans conquered Britain,
05:14but in the north, they had constant trouble from local tribes.
05:19To cement their rule, they built a vast network of forts,
05:23including the one here in Lancaster.
05:26In fact, the name Lancaster comes from the river Lune
05:30and castrum, the Latin word for fort.
05:33The remains of that ancient Roman fort
05:36still lie underneath the castle you see today.
05:40This imposing tower with its curved walls
05:43was built in the 13th century from the remains of the Roman fort.
05:47That's why it's known as Hadrian's Tower,
05:50after one of the most famous of the Roman invaders,
05:53the Emperor Hadrian.
05:56But the stone structure we see today began its life nearly 1,000 years
06:01after the time of Hadrian and the Romans.
06:04It goes back to the time of the Normans, invaders from France
06:08who conquered England in 1066,
06:11took the crown and covered the kingdom with castles
06:14as symbols of their authority.
06:17Here, on the edge of the river Lune,
06:20the Lancaster Castle looked out at the no-man's land
06:24that led towards Scotland.
06:30This is the oldest part of Lancaster Castle.
06:33It's the keep, which is the strong central part of any castle,
06:37where the lord lived and where you ran for safety
06:40if the enemy managed to break into the outer gates.
06:43Now, as you can see, it's big, it's square,
06:46and it's very hard to get into.
06:49If Hadrian had been here, he would have been up on the first floor
06:53and he'd have been able to set fire to a set of wooden stairs
06:57leading up to it if the worst happened,
07:00and that would leave your enemy down here kicking his heels.
07:05No-one knows exactly who built the keep.
07:08One theory is that it was built by King David of Scotland,
07:12who for a time in the 1140s was granted control of the north of England
07:17and a piece in this area.
07:19Building a towering stone keep of this size
07:22would have taken at least five years.
07:25Its outer walls are almost ten feet thick.
07:28It stands four storeys tall.
07:31By the 1150s, the castle was back in the hands of the English crown
07:36and began to appear in the records of the day.
07:39But soon, the castle was transformed,
07:42this time by one of the worst rulers England ever produced,
07:47the infamous King John,
07:49whose suspicion and paranoia often saw his enemies tortured
07:53and starved to death in his castle's dreaded dungeons.
08:01Lancaster's stone castle was originally built by the Normans
08:05in the 11th century to keep peace in the north,
08:09but a few years later, it underwent a major transformation.
08:14When the power-hungry King John came to the throne in 1199,
08:18he set about enlarging the castle complex.
08:22King John is remembered as one of the most treacherous,
08:25untrustworthy, sadistic, incompetent, downright evil kings
08:30in all of British history.
08:32This is the monarch who was forced to grant Magna Carta,
08:35the famous Bill of Rights, when his barons rebelled.
08:38He's the bad guy from the Robin Hood stories.
08:41His reputation is, quite frankly, awful.
08:45And guess what? It's all true.
08:49Being a suspicious tyrant, John had a great love for castles,
08:53which he quite rightly thought he needed
08:56to protect himself from his subjects and from his enemies.
09:00Lancaster, like many other castles in England,
09:03benefited from his paranoia.
09:05Just two years after visiting here in 1206,
09:08John began to spend the equivalent of a million pounds
09:12on strengthening the castle's defences.
09:17John had a deep ditch dug on the south and west sides of the castle.
09:22He replaced the wooden fencing with a huge stone wall.
09:26He ordered the building of new fortifications
09:28and work began on Hadrian's Tower,
09:31using some of the stone from the old Roman fort.
09:36But even though John's castles were impressive,
09:40they weren't necessarily nice places to end up,
09:43because as well as being reinforced to keep attackers out,
09:47their interiors were used to hold the king's enemies.
09:51During John's rule, Lancaster Castle began to be associated
09:55with crime and punishment, and the emphasis was on the punishment.
10:00John's treatment of his prisoners was notoriously cruel.
10:04In 1203, his teenage nephew, Arthur of Brittany,
10:08disappeared while locked in one of John's castles.
10:11The rumour went round that John had got drunk one Easter,
10:15bashed the kid's head in with a stone
10:17and thrown his body into a nearby river.
10:22Later, John had the wife and son of one of his great barons
10:26locked up in another castle.
10:28He ordered that they were starved to death,
10:30and it was said they died insane with hunger.
10:33When the cell door was opened, they were huddled together,
10:37the mother having tried to eat her son's face.
10:41If you ended up in one of John's dungeons,
10:44the chances were you weren't coming out.
10:50The addition of the stone wall in the new tower
10:53meant that when King John died in 1216,
10:56he left behind a greatly extended castle, looked after by a sheriff.
11:01The sheriff was an official the monarch could trust,
11:04and locals could fear.
11:06And with the job of sheriff came the castle.
11:10As the king's deputy, the sheriff was responsible for collecting taxes,
11:14keeping the peace and organising the assizes,
11:18the twice-yearly court sessions
11:20where visiting royal judges would come to town
11:23to hear serious criminal cases.
11:25These were big public events,
11:27so hosting the assizes made Lancaster Castle a very important place,
11:32and it made the sheriff a very important man.
11:37In 1362, England's King Edward III gave the position of sheriff
11:43and the title Duke of Lancaster to one of his sons, John of Gaunt.
11:49John of Gaunt wasn't directly in line for the throne,
11:52but he was a very rich and powerful man.
11:55Either by birth or by marriage, he inherited vast tracts of land
11:59between the rivers Ribble and Mersey.
12:02It was called the Duchy of Lancaster,
12:04and it made him the wealthiest lord in medieval England.
12:07Now, in 1377, when his nephew Richard II came to the throne,
12:12John of Gaunt persuaded him to turn the sheriff's job here at the castle
12:17into a job for life and to substantially increase its powers.
12:24Richard II was aware that John of Gaunt's power
12:27essentially made him King of Lancashire
12:30and a very real threat to the crown.
12:33In 1399, John of Gaunt died,
12:36leaving everything to his son, Henry Bolingbroke.
12:41Richard made a land grab,
12:43seizing the estates, the castle and the Duchy of Lancaster.
12:47In response, Bolingbroke raised an army,
12:50gaining so much support that Richard was forced to surrender without a fight.
12:58By the end of the year, Richard II was in the Tower of London
13:02and Henry Bolingbroke was King Henry IV of England,
13:05and it was King Henry who built this magnificent gatehouse.
13:10In memory of his father, John of Gaunt,
13:13it's 66 feet high, about 25 feet deep,
13:17with these soaring semi-octagonal towers
13:20and the great iron-spiked gate called a portcullis,
13:24which in medieval times would have been lowered in the event of an attack.
13:28It's got to be one of the most spectacular gatehouses in England.
13:33Ironically, Henry IV did exactly the thing
13:36he'd prevented Richard II from doing.
13:39He brought the Duchy of Lancaster under the control of the Crown.
13:43That's where it remains.
13:45So here's your start of a ten.
13:47Who is the current Duke of Lancaster?
13:55Yes, it's the Queen.
13:57As Duke of Lancaster, Queen Elizabeth II
14:00controls more than 45,000 acres of land and holdings.
14:05The Duchy is worth about half a billion pounds,
14:08with yearly revenues of around 16 million,
14:11and it all dates back to the Middle Ages.
14:18During the 14th and 15th centuries,
14:21as a castle with a sheriff, a prison and a court,
14:25Lancaster was increasingly used to enforce law and order.
14:29But here's the weird thing.
14:31For most of the medieval period, prison wasn't the punishment.
14:35You were only kept in prison to await your trial.
14:39And the form that trial took could be very unpleasant,
14:43because it wasn't always a judge who decided your fate.
14:46It could be your god, through the notorious trial by ordeal.
14:55Barrister and historian Dominic Selward explains.
14:59Trial by ordeal was the ultimate trial because, effectively,
15:02humans brought the case, but God decided the case.
15:05So in a trial by ordeal, the accused person would take an oath,
15:08and that was a really crucial part of it,
15:10and the oath was, I swear I'm innocent.
15:12And it was done on holy books and on holy relics.
15:15So the ordeal itself, whether it was carrying a piece of hot iron,
15:19putting a hand into a cauldron of boiling water
15:22to take out a hot iron ball,
15:24was God interfering in the physical world to say,
15:26yes, this person is telling the truth,
15:28or no, that person has perjured themselves.
15:30Tell us a little bit more about how a trial by ordeal would proceed.
15:34So if we take probably the best known, which is a trial by iron,
15:37a space of nine of the accused person's feet would be measured out,
15:40the iron would be heated up,
15:42and depending on the seriousness of the crime,
15:44the iron would weigh different amounts.
15:46He'd then have to pick up the iron and run the nine feet,
15:49which could be done in about two seconds,
15:51holding the iron and then drop it.
15:53His hands would then be bound up,
15:55and then three days later, the binding would be taken off.
15:58If the skin was corrupted, then he was guilty.
16:01If the skin wasn't, then he was innocent.
16:03Here in Lancaster during the Middle Ages,
16:06most punishments would have been carried out in public,
16:09from executions up on what was called Gallows Hill
16:12to being pelted in the stocks with anything from rotten vegetables
16:16to dead cats and excrement.
16:19In an age where there was no such thing as police,
16:22punishment was about making sure
16:24that law and order were seen to be enforced.
16:28So one of the most gruesome things I've found at the castle
16:31is this, the branding iron, and here's how it works.
16:34This was used until the 19th century.
16:37Your hand would be clamped here,
16:40and then this, the iron, would be heated until it was red-hot,
16:44taken out and used to imprint the letter M into the palm of your hand.
16:49Now, M stood for malefactor or evildoer,
16:52and as well as this being a very painful punishment,
16:56it was a visible sign that you had a criminal record.
16:59There was no escaping your past
17:01when it was burned into the palm of your hand.
17:05Castle historian Colin Penny has brought me to the bowels of Hadrian's Tower
17:10to show me some of the nastier tools of punishment
17:13from Lancaster's dark history.
17:15These handcuffs are tiny, little children's handcuffs.
17:18Children were put in prison from the age of nine,
17:21so they had to make handcuffs that would fit them
17:24and not fall off.
17:26This here strikes me as particularly ghastly.
17:29Tell us a little bit about what we've got here.
17:31This is a scold's bridle,
17:33and it was used to punish women who had been found guilty of crimes
17:38such as fighting in the street,
17:41and this gives a fairly good idea of what it was like.
17:44So you've got the bar here that went over the tongue.
17:48This closed around the head,
17:50and there's a loop here through which a chain would be passed,
17:53and, of course, every time they pulled on this, the bar would move.
17:57Solid metal. It would break their teeth.
17:59It would sometimes break their jaw.
18:01Some versions had a spike coming out off the bar,
18:04and every time that moved, it would split the tongue.
18:15Yeah, so now you're silenced.
18:19And if you imagine somebody pulling at the back here,
18:23your whole head would go back.
18:26I'm actually going to take it off because, all joking aside,
18:30that's absolutely horrendous.
18:33I mean, this is humiliating and painful
18:35to where it's designed to silence individuals,
18:38but it's also designed to silence political opinions, isn't it?
18:42Yes, and religious ones.
18:45Silencing dissent is a very large part of Lancaster Castle's history.
18:50Many of its most infamous inmates were people
18:53whose main offence was simply practising the wrong religion.
18:57By the 16th and 17th centuries, that usually meant being a Catholic.
19:03In 1534, Henry VIII made England a Protestant country
19:07by setting up the Church of England.
19:10Those who remained Catholics were seen as enemies of the state.
19:14From the reign of Henry's daughter, Elizabeth I, onwards,
19:18anti-Catholic feeling intensified,
19:21peaking during the reign of Elizabeth's successor, James I.
19:25Between 1584 and 1646, 15 men were executed in Lancaster
19:31for refusing to renounce their Catholic faith.
19:35England was a Protestant nation
19:37dominated by powerful Catholic enemies, including France and Spain.
19:42The gunpowder plot had been carried out by Catholics,
19:45including Guy Fawkes,
19:47who planned to blow up King James I in the Houses of Parliament.
19:51So England's Catholic population were regarded with great suspicion,
19:55potential allies of enemies trying to invade us.
19:59In this climate of fear,
20:01being a Catholic priest was an act of treason,
20:04punishable by the worst death imaginable.
20:10One of the most tragic victims of England's growing anti-Catholic hysteria
20:15was a priest called Edmund Arrowsmith.
20:20He was tried at Lancaster Castle in the summer of 1628.
20:29Unfortunately for Arrowsmith,
20:31he was tried by the famously anti-Catholic judge, Sir Henry Yelverton.
20:36He didn't stand a chance.
20:38Yelverton found him guilty of high treason
20:41and sentenced him not only to death,
20:43but to hanging, drawing and quartering.
20:46Using the dreadful words,
20:48''You shall there be hanged by the neck till you be half dead.
20:52''Your members shall be cut off before your face and thrown into the fire,
20:58''where likewise your bowels shall be burnt.
21:01''Your head shall be cut off and set upon a stake or pole,
21:06''and your quarters shall be set upon the four corners of the castle,
21:10''and so the Lord have mercy upon you.''
21:15Judge Yelverton then ordered that Arrowsmith was to be chained up
21:19in the castle's worst cell to await his horrible death.
21:24But because many people in this area were still secretly Catholic,
21:29the authorities couldn't find anyone to carry out the execution
21:33until eventually another prisoner on a death sentence
21:37agreed to do the ghastly deed
21:40in return for his freedom and 40 shillings.
21:43Everyone has a price.
21:46Lancaster Castle was gaining a reputation for tough justice
21:50and dreadful punishments,
21:52and enemies of the state could be lurking anywhere.
21:56But soon, Lancaster's greatest fear wouldn't be religious insurrection
22:00or even rebellion.
22:02It would be something very different indeed.
22:05Witchcraft.
22:10As a great British castle, Lancaster was designed for many things.
22:15Originally built for keeping people out,
22:18over time it came to specialise in locking people in.
22:22Lancaster Castle became the most notorious prison in Britain,
22:26best known for the crimes heard in its courtroom
22:29and the grisly punishments handed down within its walls.
22:34Being tried in Lancaster was never pleasant, and very often it was fatal.
22:40Over the years, hundreds of men and women left the castle
22:44to face the ultimate penalty.
22:47Death.
22:49Until about 1800, hangings happened on the other side of town,
22:54on what was called Gallows Hill.
22:57The condemned would leave the castle,
23:00escorted by the sheriff and his troops.
23:03A crowd would gather to watch the spectacle
23:06as they marched through town,
23:08and a tradition eventually developed
23:10whereby he or she was allowed to stop in the Golden Lion pub
23:14for a final drink before continuing on to their fate on the hill.
23:28They'd be wheeled up here from the castle
23:30on the back of a horse and cart, as many as eight at a time,
23:34while thousands of excited spectators gathered to watch.
23:38When they got here, they'd see a permanent wooden structure
23:42known as a gibbet.
23:44A noose around their neck would be attached to the gibbet,
23:47then the horse and cart would be driven away
23:49and they'd be left to slowly choke to death.
23:54There were more than 200 crimes
23:56which carried the death penalty until the 19th century.
23:59You could be hanged for stealing rabbits,
24:02being in the company of gypsies for one month,
24:05damaging Westminster Bridge,
24:07or impersonating a Chelsea pensioner,
24:09which, to be fair, probably didn't happen that much here in Lancashire.
24:18But there was one crime which this area really became famous for.
24:23Witchcraft.
24:25In the 17th century, Britain was gripped by a national terror of witches.
24:30Lancaster Castle was at the centre of the biggest
24:34and most notorious series of witch trials in British history.
24:39This is Pendle Hill.
24:41In the 17th century, it was a forested area
24:44with poor roads and remote villages,
24:47a place full of superstition and mistrust,
24:50home to people who scraped out a measly living
24:53on the fringes of society.
24:56And a chance encounter on a road here in March 1612
25:00led to the biggest witch trial in English history
25:03and the hanging of ten people.
25:07So here's the story.
25:09There's this young girl called Alison Device,
25:12and her granny is known locally as a healer or a cunning woman.
25:16Now, one day, young Alison is out begging by the side of the road
25:20and she meets a travelling salesman,
25:22but he won't give her the time of day.
25:25So Alison curses him under her breath.
25:28Later on, the salesman collapses.
25:31It's probably some kind of a stroke,
25:33but he blames Alison and he calls her a witch.
25:39Later, the salesman's son marches Alison, the so-called witch,
25:43straight to an ambitious and very eager local magistrate.
25:50But as soon as Alison's accused of being a witch, what does she do?
25:53She rats out her grandmother and her mother
25:56and her brother and her sister
25:59and her neighbours, the Chattocks family.
26:01If the Chattocks are going down as a witch, then so are they.
26:05And this starts escalating.
26:07Pretty soon, any death or unexplained occurrence in the area
26:11is being linked to these two families.
26:14This is turning, quite literally, into a witch hunt.
26:18This was the start of what became known as the Pendle
26:22or Lancashire Witch Trials that were held in the castle in 1612.
26:27Although the belief in witches was ancient,
26:30the fear of witchcraft was nearing its peak
26:32in the first half of the 17th century.
26:35Henry VIII had passed the first law that made witchcraft a specific crime.
26:40But when James I became King of England in 1603,
26:44he really upped the ante.
26:46James believed his enemies were using witchcraft to plot against him
26:51and he became so obsessed
26:53that he authored a book on the subject called Demonology
26:56and created a new law which made witchcraft punishable by death.
27:02Crimes included making a covenant with an evil spirit,
27:06using a corpse for magic, hurting life or limb,
27:10procuring love or injuring cattle by means of charms.
27:17Ronald Hutton is one of Britain's foremost experts
27:20in witchcraft and its folklore.
27:22What I hear, what is it about Pendle that produced witches?
27:26Pendle, around 1600, is a forest area,
27:29which means that people can squat here without being evicted.
27:32It's rough. The people who live here are often semi-criminals.
27:37They make a living by thieving, by offering magic as cunning craft.
27:43When we talk about witches, what do we really mean?
27:46A witch in this period is somebody who uses magic
27:49to try and hurt somebody else.
27:51Now, what am I going to do if a witch has put a spell on me?
27:55I have the hot new state-of-the-art response
27:58from the early 17th century, really easy.
28:01We need from you some of your urine, about halfway up,
28:05some of your nail clippings, clippings of your hair,
28:08and what we then do, if we're in a hurry, we roast it over a fire.
28:12And as your water boils, the curse is turned back on the witch.
28:19The trial of the Pendle witches was to take place,
28:22of course, in Lancaster Castle.
28:25One of the reasons the trial became so notorious
28:28is that the clerk of the court, Thomas Potts,
28:31published an account,
28:33The Wonderful Discovery of Witches in the County of Lancaster.
28:37Now, among the defendants,
28:39you had three generations of witches on trial.
28:42You had Alison, the original young girl
28:44who'd supposedly cursed the travelling salesman,
28:47James, you had their mother, Elizabeth,
28:49and the grandmother, Demdike.
28:51Now, the real star of the Pendle witch trials was another sibling,
28:55Alison's nine-year-old sister, Janet.
28:58And this book describes her as this young wench.
29:01Can you tell me a little bit about Janet?
29:04Janet is clearly a badly disturbed child
29:06from a severely dysfunctional family.
29:09And what happened in this court was her star moment.
29:12She agrees to accuse her entire family of witchcraft.
29:16When she's little, she has to be put on a table in the courtroom
29:19for people to see and hear her.
29:21Once she starts, her mother realises
29:23that her daughter is sentencing herself, the mother, to death,
29:26and begins screaming.
29:28Janet proceeds to accuse the whole family of dealing with demons
29:33and then implicate their friends in the same practices.
29:37James the King had already written in his book on witchcraft
29:41that the testimony of children should be accepted
29:44because witchcraft is such a difficult crime to prove.
29:47So this nine-year-old girl is the deciding bit of evidence
29:52that sentences not just her family, but their friends, to death.
29:57One of the accused witches was found not guilty.
30:00Another died while awaiting trial.
30:03The remaining ten, including Alison Devise, were found guilty
30:07and sentenced to be executed by hanging.
30:10This is the dungeon in the basement of the well tower
30:13where the witches were kept waiting for their trial and eventual execution.
30:17It must have been horrendous.
30:19It's damp, it's dank, there's no natural light down here at all.
30:24In fact, conditions were so brutal that Alison Devise's granny,
30:28the witch known as Old Demdike, died down here waiting for her trial.
30:34BELL TOLLS
30:39On 20th August 1612,
30:41the witches were brought along the time-honoured route across town.
30:46It's said they stopped for their final drink in the Golden Lion pub
30:50before being hanged in front of a large, jeering crowd on Gallows Hill.
31:03You can understand why Lancaster was starting to earn its nickname of the Hanging Town.
31:09But it wasn't because the sheriff was particularly cruel
31:12or because the townspeople were especially fond of killing each other
31:16or casting magic spells.
31:18It was because Lancaster Castle was the only place in Lancashire to host the Assizes,
31:24the twice-yearly court sessions when judges arrived
31:27to hold trials for everything from murder through to sheep stealing.
31:31And when they arrived, Lancaster wasn't just the Hanging Town.
31:36It was a Boom Town.
31:40The court at the castle was of huge importance to the town
31:44as the influx of judges, lawyers and clerks
31:47brought in lots of money to the local innkeepers and merchants.
31:52For 17th-century Lancaster, crime really did pay.
31:57The judges and the lawyers lived the high life.
32:01Lancaster's privileged legal position
32:04encouraged the building of some magnificent Georgian properties
32:08which still stand here on Castle Hill.
32:11This house was the residence of Thomas Covell,
32:14the keeper of Lancaster Castle during the 17th-century witch trial.
32:19Later, in the 18th century, it became an impressive residence
32:23for judges visiting Lancaster Castle to sit at the Assize courts.
32:28And by the 18th century, something else was starting up
32:32that would further increase the town's fortunes, the Industrial Revolution.
32:37Lancaster was at the epicentre of this major economic and social upheaval,
32:43and what was good for Lancaster would be good for its castle.
32:47Lancashire was really the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution.
32:51Over the course of 100 years,
32:53the growth of cotton mills and heavy manufacturing
32:56led to an explosion in population,
32:59particularly in newly thriving cities like Liverpool and Manchester.
33:04Across Britain and Ireland, tens of thousands of people
33:08were leaving the land and flocking to the industrial north.
33:13And more people meant more crime, more theft, more violence,
33:18a new generation of dissenters and non-conformists,
33:21Luddites, Chartists, early trades union agitators.
33:25And wherever these people were apprehended,
33:28even as far away as Liverpool and Manchester,
33:31where were they brought to be tried and imprisoned?
33:38Lancaster Castle.
33:39For the castle, the Industrial Revolution was good for business.
33:44With its cells full to bursting,
33:46the coming century would see the castle extensively rebuilt,
33:50and a new form of punishment was about to be dispensed, transportation.
33:57Lancaster Castle has a grisly history of crime and punishment
34:01going back over 800 years.
34:04By the 18th century, it was doing more business than ever before,
34:08as the growing population was accompanied by surging crime rates.
34:14For those awaiting their fate inside the castle,
34:17the conditions were unimaginably squalid
34:20and had changed little from medieval times.
34:23There was little or no sanitation,
34:25and men, women and even children were crammed in together,
34:30along with the mentally ill.
34:32The overcrowding and the filth were so bad,
34:35they led to several outbreaks of disease, probably typhus,
34:39which was known as jail fever.
34:41One outbreak in 1783 was so bad
34:44that as well as prisoners falling sick,
34:47the governor himself and several of his staff died.
34:51But pressure for change was slowly growing.
34:54In 1777, a prison reformer called John Howard
34:58had published a book called The State of the Prison.
35:01Howard had visited hundreds of prisons, including Lancaster,
35:07and his damning reports led to new laws about how prisons should be run.
35:12Soon, prisons had to provide male and female segregation,
35:16better sanitation and ventilation,
35:19and more communal spaces for exercise.
35:22Much of Lancaster Castle had to be redesigned
35:25to meet the new requirements.
35:28In 1796, the old medieval hall of the castle was demolished
35:32to make way for a new crown court and this shire hall,
35:35though both the work of the architect Thomas Harrison.
35:39This fabulous ten-sided room with its vaulted ceiling,
35:43gothic columns and arches,
35:45became the venue for civil, non-criminal cases
35:48like bankruptcy and divorce,
35:50but not all the money was spent on comforts for the judges and barristers.
35:57This women's prison was built inside the castle in 1821
36:02and in its own austere way, I think it's grimly spectacular.
36:08This new female penitentiary was built according to the latest
36:12labour-saving design, the panopticon principle,
36:16with cells radiating out from a central hub
36:19so that guards could watch all the inmates at the same time
36:23without them necessarily knowing that they were being watched.
36:28This was also fairly luxurious
36:31and at the same time, prisoners had their own cells,
36:34which is something that many in Britain's overcrowded jails
36:38don't even have today.
36:40In the Victorian age of innovation and invention,
36:43even the ancient practice of hanging was made more efficient
36:47and this resulted in a new venue for the executions at Lancaster Castle.
36:52After 1800, hangings were moved from Gallows Hill to this spot,
36:57around the back of the castle,
36:59in front of jeering crowds who'd gather to watch the awful show.
37:04Soon, more Britons were being executed here in the renowned Hanging Town
37:09than anywhere else outside London.
37:13This is now the Crown Court's jury room, but it was the drop room
37:17where the condemned waited before they were taken out to die.
37:21The doors opened out onto the gallows,
37:24the condemned walked out and dropped.
37:30Literally thousands of people would have gathered here
37:33in the grounds of the Priory to witness this most public of ends.
37:38Until 1853, the method of hanging used was called the short drop,
37:43a horrible way to die of slow strangulation.
37:46This was later replaced by the relatively more humane long drop,
37:51in which the victim fell much further,
37:54the neck was snapped and death was instantaneous.
37:59But radical change was in the air.
38:02In the 18th and 19th centuries, courts across England, including Lancaster,
38:07began offering an alternative punishment for some hanging offences.
38:12Transportation, as it was called,
38:14was forced banishment to an overseas penal colony,
38:18by far the largest of which was Australia.
38:21Sentences ranged from seven years to life.
38:26Between 1788 and 1868, 160,000 people were transported to Australia.
38:33Men, women and children, sometimes as young as nine.
38:39Lancaster Castle still has records for many of those
38:42it dispatched halfway round the globe,
38:45but I'm particularly fascinated by the story of two young brothers.
38:50James and Leonard Cheetham,
38:52sentenced to death in 1817 for stealing sheep.
38:56Stealing sheep might not sound like a serious offence,
38:59but these sheep were worth more than 40 shillings,
39:03which made it grand larceny, a hanging offence.
39:06However, the judge sitting here in the castle
39:10commuted their sentence to transportation.
39:15The brothers were sent to Sydney to become convict servants,
39:19but all of their time were given their freedom,
39:22and both married convict women, who'd also been transported.
39:27How do I know all this?
39:29Because their Australian descendant, Wendy Robinson, told me so.
39:33Or, to be more precise, Crown Prosecutor Wendy Robinson.
39:37Incredibly, one of Australia's most successful criminal lawyers
39:42is descended from two sheep-stealers,
39:44sentenced in this castle and in this very courtroom.
39:48Tell me what this document is, Wendy.
39:50It's the indictment upon which they were tried,
39:52or the original would have been handed up and read out in this court
39:56at the commencement of their trial.
39:58Down the bottom here it says,
40:00Leonard Cheetham and James Cheetham,
40:02they are to be severally hanged by the nick until they be dead.
40:06Well, on the following Wednesday,
40:08the judge brought a recommendation to the region and council
40:11for their death sentences to be commuted.
40:13They were separately loaded onto different boats
40:16and sent to the colony of New South Wales,
40:18both of them arriving there in 1818.
40:21How long were they sentenced to be in Australia for?
40:25Life. For life.
40:27So they never came back to England? No.
40:29What did they do?
40:31They worked as convict servants,
40:33eventually getting their ticket of leave,
40:35and then some years later they moved right out further,
40:39as the colony had expanded again onto the frontiers
40:43and beyond the known boundaries of the colony.
40:46And there they raised sheep,
40:49and they raised lots and lots of sheep,
40:52and they became famous for their wool.
40:58What do you think about this courtroom
41:01and its importance in Australian history?
41:04This is probably the most important courtroom in Australian history
41:10so far as the numbers of people
41:13who were processed through this assize from that dock,
41:17and a very large proportion of the New South Wales population
41:21to this day are descended from convicts who came through this room.
41:25Through this very room in this very castle.
41:29What are you thinking when you look out this door?
41:32I think it's truly remarkable that it's still here and that I can be here.
41:37Many lives were destroyed here at Lancaster Castle,
41:42but it seems to me it's also been the starting point
41:45for countless new stories.
41:48The last execution took place in 1910,
41:51not in public, but in a purpose-built private shed.
41:55The prison closed six years later,
41:58but was then reopened for Category C offenders, low security risks.
42:06And in 2011, after eight centuries of locking people up,
42:10Lancaster Prison finally closed its doors for good
42:14and then opened them to the public.
42:19But the Crown Court still operates here,
42:22so the castle is still fulfilling one of its original purposes,
42:26maintaining the rule of law in the mighty Duchy of Lancaster.
42:31And that's why there's been a prison here for the best part of 850 years,
42:36because as long as you've got crime, you need punishment,
42:40and Lancaster Castle is very good at punishment.
42:45OK, guys, you can let me out now.
42:48Guys?
43:00OK, guys, you can let me out now.
43:03Guys?
43:30OK, guys, you can let me out now.