If you can't do the Time, Don't do the Crime!

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Woolly says – It’s been a busy week for me, whilst the girls have been providing refreshment for the county and beyond I’ve been brushing up my golfing shots. The lovely pro here, Lewis, says I have five handicaps which I think is pretty good, the only problem being that to bring my score down further I need to lose my paws or brain…. I’m working on that conundrum! A day off however provides the opportunity to go and investigate more of the area.



I think that this is a possible first of many for us as our planned visit is to a place that Zoe and I have both been to when she was small and the mammoth hadn’t taken over our lives!



Woolly says – Through the windy roads we went, the swing backs were terrible with even Jo taking on a slight green tinge as we snaked round the forest areas, beautiful views though, well when I could bring myself to open my eyes! The town of Ruthin is a mere half hour drive from our base, the name comes from the Welsh words rhudd (red) and din (fort), and refers to the colour of the red sandstone which forms the geologic basis of the area. The Castle was built in 1277 but sadly is no more although as we parked I did notice the Castle Hotel so maybe a spot of lunch there to provide the castle part of the day! The town square seems to be filled with timber framed buildings and strangely they are mainly used as banks now, as I stood admiring the town’s war memorial, I was able to take in the half-timbered Old Court House (built in 1401), now a branch of the NatWest Bank, Barclay’s bank also in a lovely timbered building as well the Ruthin branch of HSBC. In its 18th-century heyday as a town on the drovers' routes from Wales into England, Ruthin was reputed to have "a pub for every week of the year". By 2007, however, there were only eleven pubs in the town and although I hadn’t counted there certainly weren’t even that many left now.



Knowing that we wouldn’t get much further without at least a snack break for my small friend we headed into the Castle Hotel and a quick lunch.



Woolly says – Full and ready for anything I trotted down the rather steep streets to our destination. Ruthin Gaol was started in 1775 following John Howard’s investigation into prison conditions in Great Britain, after the The Prisons Act of 1865 when a new set of standards came into being, the prison was rebuilt in the style of London's Pentonville Prison at a cost of £12,000 and opened to criminals on 1st April 1878. As Zoe has a degree in Criminals I had a font of information at my pawtips so for once I let her lead the way inside. Having smiled sweetly at the ladies in the reception area I found myself in a bright corridor with a couple of large rooms which would have once been the prison kitchens. Our knowledgeable one happily explained that prisoners would have been fed according to the level of crime and the time they had to serve, so if they were only incarcerated for a month they would have full rations of gruel, potatoes and bread every day…good job I’ve never done anything wrong as I didn’t fancy that diet one little bit and felt grateful for the pasty that I had kept for a snack.



I watched as he bounced down a set of stairs and into the dimly lit cell block of the jail.



Woolly says – I could feel the cold seeping into my paws, and hear the clanking of irons and groaning of prisoners as they walked the treadmill in the yard above my head. The heavy wooden door to the dark cell stood open, I peered inside and let out a shudder, even with a bulb shining brightly it wasn’t a place I wanted to be in, take away the light and it would be a very sobering experience. The long passage way had cells on either side, one was padded and if the padding had been on the floor instead of the floor I might have considered a nap. A cell holding a cranking box gave us information on ‘useless’ punishment in the form of a prisoner turning a crank hour after hour for no reason other than to ‘teach them a lesson’! I trotted into the next cell where it explained the jobs that would have been on offer to the inmates, picking oakrum (hemp) and making into ropes was one of the chores and with no payment to the prisoners needed it was ‘money for old rope’!





We were all enjoying the visit especially with Zoe’s knowledge giving a far greater insight into reform and modernisation of the prison system.



Woolly says – Onwards we went with fascinating relics to scrutinise and interactive screens that were just waiting for my paws to press them. Ruthin Gaol had been a mixed sex prison with many of the women having to bring their young children with them to serve the sentence as well. One of the cells gave us mug shots of offenders and their crimes, I was shocked to bottom of my trunk to find that someone had served seven months for stealing a nightshirt, while another had done hard labour for stealing apples, crikey it really didn’t do to offend in the eighteen hundreds! The next cell along gave the story of Coch Bach who appeared to have been a very naughty man with a long list of theft, burglary and other misdemeanours to his name, he was best known for escaping from the gaol before being captured and shot in the leg five days after his attempted escape, he died of his wound. Two bigger cells presented themselves containing huge earthen ware baths whre the inmates would have had their weekly dip, defiantly something to avoid with my allergy!



Having climbed up two flights of stairs we found ourselves in a much brighter and warmer area but that was the highlight, as we peered around it impacted on all of us that it was a real prison.



Woolly says – An incredibly high passageway contained cell after cell, with steps rising from the middle to other landings which again had cell after cell, the noise …..if the silence rule hadn’t been in place, would have been horrendous as hundreds of felons were crammed into the space, it looked exactly like the pictures I had seen of Pentonville which is still a working prison today. Only a few of the small cells were open to view as the majority of the building is now home to the archives for Denbigshire, the first was the condemned cell where prisoners would ask for forgiveness and receive their last meal, it was bigger than the majority would have been, cold comfort to the man facing the gallows. Only one person is thought to have been hung at the jail, William Hughes of Denbigh, aged 42, who was hung on 17th February 1903 for the murder of his wife. The last two cells were fascinating in the comparison to a Victorian prison cell and a modern century one, modern might be a slight exaggeration as the TV was defiantly 1970’s in design, but it did give you a very good idea of how far prison welfare has come over the centuries. Leaving the women to discuss more on reform and the Scandinavian penal system, which is Zoe’s speciality subject, I clambered back down the steps and wanderd back through the cell block, the dark cell lay in total darkness but for a moment I thought I heard a small cry, I crept closer to the doorway but not being able to reach the electric bulb failed to see anything amiss. A small sob met my ears and I inched into the cell itself, the noise seemed to be coming from the corner and as I nervously moved closer the door behind me closed!



Having inspected the educational activities on offer and decided that crime wasn’t an option, we followed the mammoths tracks and jam prints downwards, the dark cell was closed and we chuckled at the people who must be brave enough to sample it’s claustrophobic environment. It appeared that Woolly had headed off on his own voyage of discovery so we borrowed a map from reception and ambed round the outside of the buildings.



Woolly says – I was plunged into total blackness, chills went through my tusks and along my back, I knocked on the door and shouted out, giving it a few minutes before trying to kick the door open and screaming at the top of my lungs……



Outside was interesting and the map told us about the removal of all but one lot of bars when the prison had become a munitions factory during the second world war, we paced round the former exercise yard where we could hear some shouting and thumping from a school visit, without a mammoth in sight we wandered back to the car knowing that he would arrive there at some point with his tummy rumbling and a need to be feed.





Woolly says – …….. HELP, anyone bring supplies, I didn’t do it….honest!

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