Scotland’s Alcatraz
From hard labour to SAS rescues, this former prison has a fascinating past
KNOWN as Scotland’s Alcatraz, the bleak granite fortress of the former HM Convict Prison Peterhead was the site of 125 years of turbulent history. Now a popular visitor attraction, Peterhead Prison Museum sprawls over 2.5 hectares (six acres) of wind-battered headland, overlooking Peterhead Bay.
The museum highlights the difficult work of the prison guards that served here from 1888 to 2013, and gives visitors the chance to experience what it is like to “do time” – without committing a crime!
In the late 19th century, this Victorian jail was the only “convict prison” in Scotland – to be sent here, criminals would have been sentenced to penal servitude.
Operations manager Alex Geddes says, “It was created next to the town’s Admiralty Yard to support the build of the Harbour of Refuge – or breakwater – after a lot of shipping was lost off the coast during stormy weather.
“The convicts were transported 4km (2.5 miles) every day to the granite quarry in the first state-owned passenger-carrying railway in Britain, where they spent their days breaking huge boulders by hand.”
These rocks were transported back to Peterhead and used to build the breakwater by the team employed at the Admiralty Yard.
“However, it was not the convicts that built the breakwater, as is often suggested,” Alex says, “but the brave personnel who worked at the Admiralty Yard.”
After it was completed in 1956, prisoners began making mail bags, military uniforms and fishing nets.
Alex says, “It then became Scotland’s High Security Jail, where the most hardened criminals were held – with many rooftop riots staged there over the years.
“In 1987, officer Jackie Stuart was held hostage for four days on the roof of D-hall before being dramatically rescued by the SAS (Special Air Service).”
This was the only time the SAS was used to end a domestic siege in mainland Britain. The museum’s audio tour takes you through the halls and corridors of the
former prison – but beware, as your sense of smell will be roused in certain parts of the buildings!
Visitors explore the cells, halls, kitchen, laundry, barber shop, booking-in area and shower block, before getting a glimpse of the grisly “A-frame” used to give inmates 10 to 20 strokes of the “lash” – used from 1888 to 1939.
There is access to the courtroom and punishment block, before visitors experience the eerie “silent cell”. Measuring a cramped 2.5 square metres (25 square feet), prisoners who could not be controlled were sent here, with nothing but a concrete mattress. It was last used in 1992.
The tour then heads across the former exercise yard and into the old hospital. The upper floor of the hospital now hosts the Refuge Cafe, offering views of Peterhead and its harbour.
Famous inmates included safe-cracker “Gentle” Johnny Ramensky – he became a Second World War hero after training commandos how to break into safes.
Ramensky was dropped behind enemy lines to target Nazi headquarters before D-day in 1944.
Alex says, “Of course, once the war was over, he returned to his old ways and ended up back in HM Convict Prison, Peterhead.”
Another famous inmate was Oscar Slater, wrongfully imprisoned for the murder of a wealthy heiress in Glasgow. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, became involved in the case. Proven innocent, Slater was released in 1928, after almost two decades.
The prison has featured on our screens as the location for two short films, Locked In and Redcon-1. Outdoor scenes for the Channel 4 drama Screw were filmed there, too. After playing their “get out of jail free” card, visitors can look to the seas as the museum is also home to a former RNLI lifeboat, which was in active service in Peterhead from 1939 to 1969. Funded by a legacy gift, the vessel rescued 496 lives, and the exhibition explores 200 years of lifeboats and lifeboatmen in the town.