Transcript

Archeologists Uncover Prisoner Remains At A Victorian Jail

From Timeline - World History Documentaries · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 49 min · 7,517 words · 156 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Archeologists Uncover Prisoner Remains At A Victorian Jail", an episode of Timeline - World History Documentaries published January 7, 2026 (49 min, about 7,517 words). It mentions 12 people, works and ideas, including Applebee Police Station, Applebee prison, Victorian prison regime, Applebee jail, Sergeant Grant Warrick.

What this episode is about

Archaeologists are investigating the historical site of Applebee Police Station in Cumbria, which has housed various prison facilities since the mid-1700s. Their goal is to uncover evidence of the former jail cells and learn more about the hundreds of prisoners who were incarcerated there, including those who faced transportation or execution, all within a tight three-day timeframe.

Key takeaways

  • Applebee’s past reminds us: prisons evolved from waiting rooms for punishment to instruments of moral reform.
  • Victorian cells may seem humane, but they doubled as tools to break inmates' spirits while enforcing hard labor.
  • Excavating a car park for history? That's a classic case of 'digging deeper'—literally and metaphorically!
  • Evidence of three prisons here reflects changing views on crime, punishment, and society's criminal justice evolution.
  • The tread wheel: a reminder that punishment was once about toil, not just confinement—a hamster wheel for humanity.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 5:00: Time Team, Applebee Police Station, Applebee jail, Victorian discipline
  2. – 10:00: Applebee prison, Applebee jail, Gallows Hill, prison reform act
  3. – 20:00: Victorian prison regime, Sergeant Grant Warrick, Victorian discipline
  4. – 35:00: Time Team, William Dennison
  5. – 40:00: Applebee prison, William Dennison
  6. – 48:51: William Dennison

Notable quotes from "Archeologists Uncover Prisoner Remains At A Victorian Jail"

  • This is Applebe Police Station in Cumbria and under my feet is a 200-year cross-section of British crime and punishment. We've been invited here by the local conabulary to find.
    about Applebee Police Station · at
  • Where we're going to put the first trench. In fact, there's been more than one prison on this site. And thanks to the dedicated research of a Dr. Blake Tyson using records from Cumbria Record Office, we've got plans for everyone.
    about Dr. Blake Tyson · at
  • Far from it. It was intended to be healthier in some senses, but also it was intended to break the will of the prisoner so that their mind could be got at particularly by the prison chaplain with a view to reconstructing their sort.
    about Victorian prison regime · at
  • And for centuries, the condemned of Applebee finished their lives at this desolate spot beside an old Roman road, a place known locally as Gallows Hill.
    about Gallows Hill · at
  • This public spectacle was eventually banned when the 1868 prison reform act moved executions inside prison walls.
    about prison reform act · at
  • Worked. As an experiment, we're going to recreate a Victorian prison regime. And Applebee's current sergeant, Grant Warrick, will be enforcing mid 1800s law and order.
    about Sergeant Grant Warrick · at
  • Archaeological front, we're really going to get down into that 1770s prison to see if we can find one of the cells in which William Dennison would have been imprisoned over 200 years ago.
    about William Dennison · at
  • The history of crime and punishment on this site started in 1771 when a new prison was built for Applebee.
    about Applebee jail · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Sergeant Grant Warrick — Person · Local police host / on-site collaborator; reenactment turnkey · 2 mentions · first at
    A serving police sergeant at Appleby Police Station who invited the team and enforces a Victorian prison-regime reenactment, helping interpret discipline and prison routine.
  • William Dennison — Person · Referenced historical inmate / escapee · 3 mentions · first at
    Cited as a named prisoner who escaped Appleby jail in 1798; his escape is used to explain the boulder anti-escape measure found archaeologically.
  • Dr. Blake Tyson — Person · Referenced researcher / archival expert · 1 mention · first at
    Credited with researching prison records and plans via the Cumbria Record Office, enabling the team to target trenches and compare plans to excavated reality.

Companies & orgs

  • Time Team — Company · Business focus · 4 mentions · first at
    The team conducting the archaeological investigation at the Applebee prison site.
    Cumbria and under my feet is a 200-year cross-section of British crime and punishment. We've been invited here by the local conabulary to find archaeological evidence of not…
  • Cumbria Record Office — Company · Referenced expert · 1 mention · first at
    Provided historical records and plans that aided the archaeological investigation.
    Where we're going to put the first trench. In fact, there's been more than one prison on this site. And thanks to the dedicated research of a Dr. Blake Tyson using records from Cumbria Record Office, we've got plans for everyone.

Concepts & topics

  • Victorian prison regime — Concept · Core topic · 3 mentions · first at
    Central theme of the episode, discussing the harsh conditions and disciplinary methods of Victorian prisons.
  • Victorian discipline — Concept · Key argument · 2 mentions · first at
    Discusses the harsh disciplinary methods used in Victorian prisons to break the will of prisoners.
    Far from it. It was intended to be healthier in some senses, but also it was intended to break the will of the prisoner so that their mind could be got at particularly by the prison chaplain with a view to reconstructing their sort.
  • prison reform act — Concept · Key argument · 1 mention · first at
    Discusses the legislative changes that moved executions indoors and reformed prison practices.

Places & events

  • Applebee Police Station — Place · Setting · 2 mentions · first at
    Primary location where the archaeological investigation of the historical prisons is taking place.
  • Applebee prison — Place · Setting · 2 mentions · first at
    Historical prison site that is the focus of the archaeological dig, with three phases of construction.
    Cumbria and under my feet is a 200-year cross-section of British crime and punishment. We've been invited here by the local conabulary to find archaeological evidence of not…
  • Applebee jail — Place · Setting · 2 mentions · first at
    Another name for the historical prison site at Applebee, focusing on its function as a jail.
  • Gallows Hill — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at
    Historical execution site associated with the Applebee prison.

Full transcript with timestamps

It's not much fun being banged up in the nick, but in the past this would have been regarded as quite a cushy number. This is Applebe Police Station in Cumbria and under my feet is a 200-year cross-section of British crime and punishment. We've been invited here by the local conabulary to find archaeological evidence of not one, not two, but the three prisons which have been on this site since the mid 1700s. We also want to find out more about the hundreds of prisoners who were incarcerated, transported to the colonies, or sent to their deaths by hanging from this site. It's a massive challenge, and as usual, we've got just three days to do it.

Oh, and one of our number is going to get a little bit closer to experiencing Victorian discipline than they might have bargained for. Heat. Heat.

For centuries, Applebee was the county town of the now extinct West Morland in Cumbria. That meant it was also the center of imprisonment and punishment for the county. Convicts were first held here at the medieval castle and then in a small jail that spanned the River Eden. Finally, in 1771, a specially built courthouse and prison were erected on this site. Some of the original buildings still remain as part of Applebee's police station, and that's where PC Roelly Earl and Sergeant Grant Warick have invited Time Team to unearth its penal past with the help of old plans.

You've brought us here to one of the most beautiful parts of the country, and we end up in a car park.

What have you got for us? Well, this is the site of the old county in Westland jail and it's bounded by the wall here. We've got the courts and the police station here in the background was part of the original jail and we really just want to to to have a look and see what's under the tarmac.

What is it that you want us to find for you? Well, we're particularly interested in whether the cells actually existed, how big they were, and particularly in this tread wheel here, what that would actually have looked like if it was standing in in a in a particular form. A tread wheel. Is that one of those wheel things that prisoners walk around like hamsters in a wheel?

Absolutely. What's often called a a treadmill. And because we've got a an 1875 plan of the the new prison build, we've got a fix on where we think that tread wheel was low catered. And you can actually see there's a kink in the wall there. And it's where you can see this angle in the wall just here. Yes. Right here. Absolutely. and it's likely to have been very solidly constructed. So, there's likely to be good, solid, obvious archaeology in there. So, that's where we're going to put the first trench. In fact, there's been more than one prison on this site. And thanks to the dedicated research of a Dr. Blake Tyson using records from Cumbria Record Office, we've got plans for everyone.

The first built in 1771, a second jail in the 1820s, and finally the 1870s prison with the treadmill that Phil's now investigating. In fact, we've got plans coming out of our ears.

What the heck are we doing here? Why are we bothering to do? Well, the thing about plans is that plans express what people were intending to do. There's a big question about whether or not the intention is turned into a reality on the ground. We want to know whether the plans match up when we actually dig up the archaeology. We simply don't have the time or the manpower to strip this whole car park. Although knowing time team, we'll have a good try. We're going to start with specific targets. Trench one is already looking at the late Victorian tread wheel. While in trench two, we're going right into the heart of this complicated site. The idea is that we hit this area, the cell block, the new Victorian cell block that goes in in 1875.

But by digging in here, what we're hoping to pick up also is evidence of the earlier Victorian prison and the even earlier late 18th century cells as well. So, we should get all three phases of prison building. Excellent.

If we can find all three phases of Applebe jail in trench 2, we should unearth a series of prison cells. The biggest will be from the earliest build. They were then divided in two for the 1820s redevelopment, while brand new, even smaller cells were built for the 1870s prison. Each cell represents a major change in the British attitude to crime and punishment. When the first jail was built in 1771, prison cells weren't really used for punishment. They were basically holding centers where groups of convicts, men and women, waited for their sentences to be carried out. Anything from a flogging right up to transportation to the colonies or even execution.

But gradually the authorities realized that imprisonment itself could be used as a punishment using smaller cells with preferably only one prisoner in each.

So was that a more humane way of treating prisons? Everyone had their own single cell.

Far from it. It was intended to be healthier in some senses, but also it was intended to break the will of the prisoner so that their mind could be got at particularly by the prison chaplain with a view to reconstructing their sort of ethics and morals. But that was operated in combination with hard labor. In this case, um, long hours on a treadmill.

How's it going, Phil? Very, very frustratingly at the moment. We've actually got our first wall. Look.

Oh, yeah. We got one edge along there and we got the other edge coming along there.

But to get down onto it, it is just so hard. Look, it is like concrete. The mat's hardly taken any impact at all.

So, I think the only way we're going to get this off in anywhere near the time that we've got available to us is we're going to have to get the machine back in.

All right. It now looks like it might take us longer than we thought to get to the archaeology. But it's given Corenza the opportunity to start searching the local archives for the personal stories of Applebee inmates.

Composure and said, "Why are you weeping? Surely not for me. Weep not for me." Hymns were sung.

And time and again those stories involved the ultimate punishment, death by hanging.

He looked up at the gallows, groan deeply, and said, "Oh, don't don't let me go. Do let me go. Don't hurt me. And as he's dropped, a body gave a slight compulsive heave with his shoulders. After hanging an hour, he was cut down, put in his coffin, and sent to his sorrowing father who was waiting for his body. And for centuries, the condemned of Applebee finished their lives at this desolate spot beside an old Roman road, a place known locally as Gallows Hill. It's a nice spot, Roland. This is a classic place for where a gallows might be situated up on the hill close to a Roman road. In effect, the main trunk road through this part of the world.

Well, why would you want it uh so close to the road? Well, in this case, it you've got travelers coming backwards and forwards. Imagine the effect on people if they come along here and see somebody up on the gallows. It sort of, you know, don't don't mess with us. This this is serious justice going on here. It is quite a statement and this high spot here is the perfect place for the gallows or jibet.

What's the difference between gallows and jibet? Oh, the gallows is an apparatus for hanging people. A jibet is a device for displaying the bodies of the executed felon in an iron cage usually where they would hang until they the bodies were broken down either by birds eating them or by the weather. Now,

how long would they be there for? They would often be there for many years. They were treated with tar or pitch to preserve the bodies so that the symbolic demonstration lasted for as long as possible. This public spectacle was eventually banned when the 1868 prison reform act moved executions inside prison walls. Which leads us to this building on our site. Because local folklore has it that this workshop used to be Applebe prison's place of execution.

They call this the hanging room, don't they? If this really was where people were hanged, would there have been the old trap door in the middle?

Indeed, a trap door with a mechanism for releasing it and sufficient space for a handful of observers.

But these executions are indoors. Before that, they were outside, weren't they? Previously, the state believed that it cast them in a good light to be seen to be exhibiting their power and punishing um wrongdoers in a public and spectacular way. Over time, they became increasingly uneasy that it did not cast them in a good light and perhaps cast the the felon as victim and the state as barbarous and uh and torturers almost. So they moved them into the prison itself where witnesses would be very restricted.

Okay. You've had a chance to look at this place. Was it a hanging room? It's certainly a possibility in that it's adequately large. It has space beneath for a long drop. Um ideally it would be really wonderful to find some part of the mechanism. It may seem ghoulish, but this is fascinating local history. So, we're going to rip up the floor and see what we can find. In trench 2, geopizz have been hard at work. And John now thinks he can focus our search for the cells.

Now, we've got a few wall lines coming out this way. They're just beyond the trench.

Okay. And then at the meter, we've got quite a substantial wall just below our feet here.

So basically to hit any of John's targets, we'll have to go deeper and wider. Phil over in trench one, Phil's now found evidence that he's in the third and final phase of Applebe prison. Well, we got this wall coming out through here. We know that this appears to cut this drain because it stops and it's been chopped through by that. This one here also butts up against this wall here. You can see there's enough room to get your TR in behind there. So, that is that is probably the latest wall.

A wall on its own doesn't make a room. So, Phil still needs to dig further if he's to confirm we've really found the treadmill. Over in trench 2, the store is somewhat different.

What do you think you've got down there, Dave? Um, well, it looks actually like a bit of a sort of mishmash of of walls at the moment. We've got one coming through here. We've got its return here. I'm not quite sure what the relationship is with this wall in here. To be quite honest, I'm a bit confused. It's not quite what I was expecting to see from the plans.

No, I was expecting to have prison cells here and this doesn't look like a prison cell to me.

What do you think about it, Stuart? I've been looking at the maps and the plans together and by 1970. There's a large a large building in here with a series of steps in it. So, you've got series of JS kicking back exactly at this point. So, you need to be aware there's been a very

telling me this is most probably a modern building. This shows that cross- refferencing ordinance survey maps with the plans could be vital in determining our digging strategy. And that means Stuart with the help of standing buildings expert Richard Morris will have to survey the whole side. These things here row of signs. Look up there. You got this whole

steps up there. 5.1 Richard. 5.1's there. And this is the courtyard here. Clearly they intended to take the wall.

I think all this is Victorian anyway. The same as on the inside the courtyard, isn't it?

Hello, Richard. Great news and developments. We have got walls all over the place. And I think we

in trench one. Phil's now confident he's got his 1870s room. And I reckon that that wall there is that wall down there. Now the question is,

is it the room that housed the treadmill? In other words, what's the dimensions of that room? Phil, and you got a tape, have you? Uh,

can you bring it up here? Can you scale off the size of the treadmill? It's about a millimeter to a foot on here.

So, it's about 16 or 17 ft. All right, let's have that all taped. Then, if I stand on this wall and you go down there, what we got? That's just about 17 ft.

This is definitely the treadmill. Yeah, can't argue with that. Excellent. And this is the machine that would have once stood here. A wooden contraption that prisoners had to walk on for hours at a time without rest, refreshment, or talking to their fellow inmates. Cool. Seeing that thing going round and round, you realize how awful it must have been for the prisoners. each one in one of these little stalls treading on the mill for hour after hour.

The idea was simply to break the spirit of prisoners through as many hours as possible of mindnumbing, mindless, hard labor

and it was up to 5 hours at a time for 11 hours a day and really dangerous as well. There's a record at Applebe some poor lad being killed on this treadmill. He was only in for poaching. It's almost the end of day one, but we've got high hopes that tomorrow we'll locate the elusive prison cells in Trench 2, but that's only part of our quest to understand how these prisons worked. As an experiment, we're going to recreate a Victorian prison regime. And Applebee's current sergeant, Grant Warrick, will be enforcing mid 1800s law and order.

What's he actually going to be? He's going to be a turnkey, which is not the overall governor of the prison, but the the operative warder, if you like.

Well, he's halfway there. Although, I have to say that from the moment that he put these boots on, suddenly his character changed. What What is it about them?

I don't know, to be honest. All they are is boots with 13 hobnails in the bottom. When you wear them, you feel taller, you feel prouder, and you feel more powerful.

Let's have a look at the jacket. Okay. But which of our diggers is going to experience the full force of Victorian discipline? Beginning of day two in our search for the three prisons of Applebee here in Cumbria. And in this trench, we think we may come down on all three cell blocks. We reckon that the earliest, the Georgian one's here somewhere. The early Victorian is here and the late Victorian over there. This sounds straightforward enough, but the three cell blocks sit on top of each other. To make matters worse, the rubble from the different rebuilds, but a rogue 20th century building, have slowed our progress.

But yesterday's geophys results have at last guided us to our first major discovery. We're just starting to uncover a feature that John predicted would be at the back of the trench. And even better, Stuart, who's been surveying the site, can now confirm that it belongs to the earliest cell block.

Got some uh good news, I think, for you here. And been checking the measurements from the bits of buildings that do survive and where they relate to this lot. And we can now confirm that this thing here is the back of the 1771 cell block. So you're you're inside the cells effectively there. Wall comes along here. Excuse me. Comes along here up to here back up. That's the corner. It's where we predicted it would be. And the front of the block, sorry about this. The front of the block is in line with that building up there. Okay.

So that's the extent to the 1771 prison cell block. This may seem a huge room, but at the time it was built, each cell would house up to 20 inmates, both men and women. Establishing this 1771 cell block is crucial to our investigation. But

the one problem is there's so much of this material to get rid of before we can get down onto it.

It's not my problem. So, go get on with it. Thanks. And we haven't finished with trench one yet. Yesterday, Phil established that this was the location of the 1870 prison's treadmill, but he also uncovered this drain, which we now believe is part of a toilet block from an earlier phase of the jail. Oh. Oh, that looks Now, that looks very juicy, doesn't it? That is probably teeming with organics. It is so rich you could grow tomatoes in that I can tell you. Any should we get the rest of this off? These byproducts of Applebee's penal past could shed some light on what prison life was like. But in the meantime, we're about to try a more direct approach.

We're going to subject one of our diggers to a taste of the mid Victorian prison regime with the help of one of the police officers who invited us here, Sergeant Grant Warrick. The tone should be the barking of commands rather than chatting. Prisoners would only speak in reply to a direct question from the turnkey.

Now, normally you're a little sweetie. Do you reckon you can do that? I'll try my best.

You can be a swine, can you? Uh well, some people would say I could be. So, it's now time to incarcerate our willing volunteer convict or Jim to his friends.

Jim, this is it. I come quietly. Yeah. Come with me. Good luck, mate. Thank you very much.

Okay. Come on then. Archaeologists and crew, can I have a word just for a moment? We want we want to do this properly with Jim. So for the next 24 hours, nobody talks to him. No jokes or gags, no slipping in bits of food. He really is going to be in a 19th century prison regime. He's absolutely persona nong grata. For the rest of the dig, Jim is going to experience a number of the hard labors meated out to prisoners in the mid 1830s.

Thank God for that. They got him at last. His first ordeal is the crank. 1 hour, 3,000 turns. Don't stop.

A device that doesn't actually do anything but keep the prisoner busy. It would have been standard issue here. But did the jail also have the ultimate form of punishment? Yesterday we set about investigating whether Applebe Prison did as locals believe have its own hanging room.

Carrie, what sort of things you finding down there? Well, it's obvious that these timbers have been reset into the wall. And the other thing is that it's plastered below the level of the floor.

Oh, right. So, any original floor we've got anything with a a hanging drop in it has gone.

It's gone. And also the documents don't seem to tie with a hanging room. This was a magistrate section and not the sizes. So you wouldn't have the hanging room in the magistrate's court.

No. All the evidence we found suggests Applebee's hanging room is little more than an urban myth. It's lunchtime now and all the archaeologists and the crew have gone to location catering. I think it's tuna teriyaki today. But Jim has got this

absolutely a cabbage soup. It is. And and a decent sized chunk of bread. Stop. Pick up your bowl. Fortified by a far superior lunch, Jim's former colleagues are having a much more rewarding time. In Trench 2, we're now confident we found the back wall of the earliest 1771 prison. But we've also unearthed something that isn't in any of the plans. What we've got here is the floor surface of the prison cell. And for some reason, the floor surface has been cut into and these large boulders have been placed down in through the floor right flush up against the wall. And I don't understand why.

The corner. 5 minute break. There's your water. Well, I just had lunch as you've probably seen and uh it wasn't very nice. Um you lose all sense of time and you have no idea what time it is. I can see a little bit of sunlight coming through the windows, but that's it. Um, the monotony is quite unbelievable. And after 24 hours of this, um, I don't know what I'm going to do. Why on earth would anybody cut a trench along the inside of a prison wall and fill it with boulders like this?

In trench 2, Corenza thinks she may have found an explanation for the mysterious stones.

We've got a reference here to somebody who tried to escape from the prison. And after that escape, there was an order made to get proper workmen to sink large stones around the cells of the county jail where wanted. I wonder if that's what this is. These look like large boulders. They're sunk around the walls.

Okay. And the suggestion seems to be that the escape attempt may have involved trying to tunnel under the walls because the foundations were too shallow. And so these stones have been put in to obstruct anyone trying to dig through.

Well, that's fascinating. Let's test it then by sticking a section in here, seeing what the fill of this cut is, how far down it goes, and whether it goes down below the level of the wall foundations. While Corenza tries to find out more, GIF fizz have got a new target. The changing attitude to imprisonment didn't just result in smaller cells. It also meant the introduction of a separate prison for women. And we're particularly interested in the 1870s women's jail that occupied this part of the car park bath. Reception female porch.

John, someone's extremely confident about what they're going to find. Not me. Definitely not me. We've got this plan of the late Victorian prison. And it shows the layout of this corner here. We've got a big chimney, female porch, reception room, bath, toilet in here, which is what I've marked out on the ground. If we dig down here, we should hopefully find some components of this part of the late Victorian uh female part of prison.

Our picture isn't anything like that whatsoever. Surprise, surprise. What have you predicted for us? Well, we don't have a clear plan like that. Some of the elements seem to be there, but to be honest, it's not clear. If there's walls here, I'll be really surprised. But there's one really nice thing. That response there, our best anomaly, and that's here. And that's so that's got for geoysics and dig there. So trench 3 is going in to establish the front of the late Victorian women's prison. It's going to be a challenge to remove all the tarmac and rubble in the time we've got left, but at least we do have modern groundbreaking machinery. Unlike Jim,

your task for the next two hours is to break these rocks. Every rock you break, you will be no bigger than that. Understand? It's a pretty dreadful job, but at least he's got a bit of variety. Yes. In reality, that would not have been the case. Every day of his sentence would in fact have been the same one of these tasks. They're things that you can't easily make a mess of. Having been told that, you know, there's a volume of stone here and it must be reduced to aggregate. You can't fail to do it and conceal that.

Stop. That's the size I want them. Not like that. Poor bloke. Over in trench one, Phil's delving around in the organic matter of the toilet drain has yielded results. A rather lovely pipe.

So, this was flushed down the toilet. That's right. Lovely. I don't know if you can see the writing on here, but it's got the maker's name, W White. And it's got the gauge of the pipe, 70. Wow.

And then if you flip it over on the other side, it actually says that it was made in Glasgow.

Very faint, isn't it? This is going to be late 19th century, this pipe. Now, I'm a bit confused about this cuz we've got lots and lots of these pipes that are coming from all around on this site, and they've all been used. Were they supposed to be smoking the inmates?

They clearly were. I mean I mean with that one it looks like they were sneaking in and sneaking into the for a quick smoke.

Absolutely. Yeah. You know what this means though. Jim should be allowed a backy ration.

I bet he's a common criminal. Well, so are these people smoking these. As it happens, we've decided to agree with Phil on this matter. So, no snout for Jim. This might be a physical task, but it's just as monotonous as turning the wheel at the end of the day. You're not breaking up rocks for any reason. You're just breaking them up. But I can see how a combination of boredom and absolute exhaustion um would make prisoners very easy for the guards to control. Uh, and certainly you're not going to be wanting to do any violence to anybody after you've been doing this for a few hours, let alone a few weeks.

Jim's still got another hour of rock breaking ahead of him. Okay, back to work.

Plus a night in the cells. But for the rest of us, it's almost the end of day two. We've achieved everything in trench one, so we're going to close it down.

Yeah, it ties up with the plants very nicely. You've got This will allow Phil and his diggers to concentrate on unpicking the three phases of cell building in trench 2.

Here's the latest partition coming through here. While in trench three, we've just started to find walls in the women's prison. It's been an exhausting day and in true time team tradition, it's time for us all to hit the pub.

Well, almost all of us. Kneel down. 15 minutes of prayer. Keep your head down. You can contemplate your sins.

Karen, have we found out the name of our prisoner who tried to escape? Yeah, we have. We found a lot. He's called William Dennis who caused all this trouble. As far as I can see, he is actually listed here as having stolen a silver watch, um, a silk handkerchief, one pair of stockings, one knife, and 10 shillings, one shirt, two white handkerchiefs, and another pair of stockings. It doesn't sound too serious, does it? But this is honestly the sort of offense that he could have been condemned to death for at that date which was 1798. So I guess he thought it was worth his while to try and tunnel out.

Was his escape successful? Well, yes it was because it says here having broke the jail was then at large and did not appear. So he clearly got out of Applebe prison. Um I think those stones are his monument.

As you can see we're just about at the end of day two. And tomorrow, poor old Jim is going to wake up incredibly early, have a very rudimentary breakfast and a bit more hard labor. And on the archaeological front, we're really going to get down into that 1770s prison to see if we can find one of the cells in which William Dennison would have been imprisoned over 200 years ago. It's the start of day three, and because of the difficult ground, we've decided to start extra early. But not quite as early as Jim, who's been up since 6:00 a.m. enjoying a spell of Victorian prison life.

Breakfast. And his next taste of porridge gr. The 1870s women's prison in trench 3 is beginning to take shape. We've now got exterior and interior walls, floors, doorways. In fact, all the rooms that Stuart predicted.

You come into here and across here is a door into what's called the female porch. Remember, it was marked out here.

And what's it for? It's basically just a reception area before they're going to be cleaned. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Then what they do, they take you through the door here. Yeah. Into the reception room. Yeah. And this is where you get undressed.

Don't do it. You get undressed. Yeah. Then what they do, they send you through there.

Yeah. And that is a room there between that and the wall behind you is the bath.

You get back. But the type one thing we found out Rolley, the local copper has found out for us that the bath itself was a freestanding stone bath. It wasn't a plunge pool and it was actually taken away from the site to the police museum in Penri, but nobody knows where it is anymore. in some police inspector's back garden.

You might say that I wouldn't. So once you've had your bath, you come back out again.

Here I am. And you get dressed again. Yeah. Walk back into the reception. Yeah.

Back into this corridor rather the female porch. Yeah. But instead of going out to freedom, they turn you this way.

And once you step through here, you're in prison. Oh, very tired. Um, I haven't got much sleep, so [snorts] I'm very glad I'm not breaking rocks today cuz I don't think I'd have the energy. Um, my body is very stiff. Um, I've got a very stiff neck and um very stiff shoulders. [snorts] Then waking up uh in the morning, the first things I was hearing were the uh um jailer's boots and the rattling keys. And there's a sense of anticipation that you know that it's almost time for you to start another meaningless task for the rest of the day.

Over in trench 2, we now have the back wall and one interior wall of the 1771 jail. But how much we'll find at the two later prisons now depends on how quickly we can fight our way through the rubble and 20th century buildings that have blighted this trench. But it's not all doom and gloom.

Keep sliding. Oh, nearly all of it. Oh man. We've made some intriguing finds, including a perfectly preserved ward uniform and pair of boots.

This is just like the ones Grant are wearing is in the warders uniform. And they've got the toe plate,

the hub nails, and this well, it's like a horseshoe on the heel, isn't it? It's fantastic.

Big noisy boot. And then the actual belt that maybe one of the warders was wearing.

I don't know. Is it quite similar to the ones you've still got on uniform? We went It's a very similar size actually, isn't it, to to to ours?

Yeah. Not far off at all, but obviously older. It's just fantastic. Really brings it to life.

Yeah, it really does. Yeah, that's great. Got another bit of the prison here. It's one of the bars from the actual windows. Yeah. And these ridges here are where it would have been set into the windows. So, not very much light would have got into a window that length.

And is that into wood or or a stone lint? I don't know. I think it's more likely it would have been stone at the period that we're looking at. Have you still got any of these in the station?

But none in the station, but there are some in the courtyard a bit bigger than that. But yeah, you can just imagine someone

holding on and looking through. Strong, aren't they? It's fantastic. Straight ahead. Down your bucket and your mug. Task for today. Turn round. One shovel, one pile of soil. Move that soil from there to in front of these rocks here. Understand? Understand? Two hours. Carry on.

Our experiment's now really beginning to take its toll on Jim and it's affecting the rest of the team. Now, every time he's on site, the atmosphere becomes much more somber. But as Corenza's discovered, criminals in Applebee could suffer even worse punishments. We've got records of people being fgged through the streets. There's one woman in 1791, Martha Phillipsson. She is taken from the prison across the bridge, stripped to the waist, flogged on the back until the blood came, all the way up to the top of the hill, the white cross up there, and all the way back again. It took an hour to do that journey. She was then locked up back in the prison in solitary confinement at night, hard labor during the day for 4 months, taken out again four months later when her back had just appealed.

Same thing again, same thing again four months later for a year. What had she done?

She'd stolen iron work worth 10 p. [snorts] Seeing the effect of just one day's prison on Jim and having heard the stories of whipping and executions here at Applebee, I'm not surprised that people tried to escape. Yesterday, we heard of the exploits of one William Dennison who tunnneled out of here in 1798. We also found the authorities response to his escape. A row of boulders buried up against the outside wall of the jail. Would those stones have been an effective anti-escape device?

When you first look at it, it's not convincing because what we found is that where we've taken our slot out here, the boulders don't go down very far and there's not really much depth to it at all. It comes down onto that sandstone bedrock. And on the other side where we've gone down a bit deeper, we can see the wall foundations. And we know the bottom of them is deeper than these boulders. So at first you think, how can that possibly prevent escape? One possibility that occurs to me is if somebody did manage to burrow through the sandstone, is it possible that the boulders would then have dropped in and collapsed the tunnel and would that perhaps discourage an escape attempt?

Do you buy that? I don't think so. I think it was a bodgege job just for show if that was all.

So this was just a PR job on behalf of the authorities who were embarrassed after an escape.

I think so. Yeah. Despite this fantastic find, Trench 2 has continued to frustrate us. We haven't found any major archaeology from the last two prisons. A lot of it seems to have been lost due to later disturbance, probably the 20th century building that once stood here. But Phil's got one final discovery from the first Applebee prison.

Now, come out of it. Look at that. Phil, it's an iron bar and it's actually sunk into the foundation trench of this wall. Here's here's the wall.

Here's the edge of the foundation trench running along. Look. And there's a big old iron bar in there. And we're actually inside the 1771 cells. So these must have been sunk really deep and come right I mean the surface must have been up here somewhere.

Well, that's right. Yeah, the floor floor must have been up there. We've actually got them all over here, too.

Right. Look. Excuse me. Sorry. You see, we got one here and then there's one there and there's one there. So, they're about that far apart.

You could squeeze through them though, couldn't you? Ah, but suppose they were actually part of a big super structure that came up to a wall plate or something like that and then you put in intermediary ones to close the gaps at a higher level.

That would work, wouldn't it? Obviously didn't want the devils to get out, did they?

They certainly didn't. This morning, we thought we'd found a perfectly preserved Victorian ward uniform, but Bridget's now got some compelling evidence that it isn't. There's a copper alloy zip here.

All right. The zip means it's got to be at least late 1940s or later. Unfortunately,

over in trench 3, Stuart may have established the outline of the 1870s women's prison, but John's determined to find the cause of a large anomaly he discovered yesterday.

Does still sound a bit hollow, doesn't it? And there's got to be a reason for that.

Could be. Tough to co to find out. Could be a well underneath. Don't jump. On the other side of the site, it's finally time to release Jim from his ordeal.

Stop. Shovel in the pile. No shovel in the pile, not shovel the pile. Stand up straight and look at me. And much against my better judgment, the governor has decided that your sentence is finished, so you are free to go.

Thank goodness. Oh, thank you. Here you are, mate. We got something for you. Here's the lunch.

That looks good. That looks really good. And pot of scotch. Oh, just leave me in here today. Oh

yes. Yes. Yes. Look at this. Mhm. Real food. It's got taste. There is darkness. Oh.

So, what was it about him that did your head in? Your whole life is ruled by the guard

who you you don't know when it's time to wake up or when it's time to go to bed or when your 5-minute break is over or when your 15-minute task is over. It's all down to

So, in a way, he's not only your torturer, he's your friend as well, cuz he's the one who tells you when you can stop doing the thing you don't want to do.

Absolutely. Yeah. Uh he's completely in charge of your life. That's certainly what I call avoid.

I think it's something you should avoid to be honest. What was it like being in charge of someone who just wouldn't do anything unless you told them to?

That that I think that was quite scary actually. I mean, interestingly, from my point of view, when I came in the cell this morning

and I asked you to bring your buckets, what I saw was you went for your boots and then you looked at me and I didn't respond. And because I hadn't told you, you just abandoned them and you actually went you went outside

in bare feet. Jim, for doing what you've done, I've got one present for Oh, that's what I need. Thank you very much indeed.

Can I just point out no smoking policy in this building? Do what he says for God's sake. What can you see then?

There's brick vaulting running all the way through here underneath the floor. And they've obviously had collapse here before because there's brick peers and timber supports under here.

But what is it? Well, once again, it's Stuart who has the answer. This is channel is part of a central heating system. There's a stove under there. That's where the air is heated and then it circulates round back along here and then the gases smoke goes out through the chimney. So

this sophisticated system heated the new cell blocks and it gives us a good idea of just how much was invested in the 1870s to give Applebe a state-of-the-art prison. Over in Trench 2, we can finally show the police officers who invited us here the original cells that started this site's long association with law and order. I'm pleased to tell you that finally we found the whole of the 1771 cell. It goes around here all the way under the spoil heap down here and back down here. Did you ever reckon we'd find it?

No, we didn't. No, it's it's it's been a real surprise to us that you've actually got down to the original cell and we Well, we're actually standing in the middle of it here and now, aren't we? It's just fantastic.

But you you swine. What did you do to our gym? I didn't do anything to I was just told what to do.

That's always the excuse. Absolutely. But uh the thing I have learned is that how one person can have power over someone else with very little effort.

Yeah. And I think that's something that will stay with us long after this program's finished to be honest.

The history of crime and punishment on this site started in 1771 when a new prison was built for Applebee. In large communal cells, convicts awaited their fate, be it fgging, transportation, or hanging. In the 1820s, the men and women were separated and the cells got smaller. As the jail was converted to house more prisoners, for whom imprisonment was the punishment. Finally, in the 1870s, a new prison was built with cells designed to hold a single prisoner. This new fashion for solitary confinement was expensive and the prison cost Applebe £5,000 almost £2.5 million by today's standards but surprisingly it was to shut within 4 years. There seemed rarely to have been anything like enough prisoners to justify its existence.

Prisons are always enormously expensive undertakings. That of course is one of the reasons that solitary confinement eventually disappeared. They couldn't actually keep up with the trends in in punitive strategies.

So the doubters were right. It really was too small a place to have its own prison.

That would seem to be the obvious conclusion. Now all that's left of these three prisons are the courthouse and police station. Plus the fascinating glimpses of prison life we've uncovered. Being trapped inside these claustrophobic walls for the last three days has only served to heighten our sense of what it must have been like for the men and women who are incarcerated here. And for all of us, the effect that it had on Jim brought that even closer. A process which seemed to brutalize not just the prisoners, but the people who looked after them has thankfully been consigned to the dust bin of history.

All that remains are these walls, which amazingly have survived along with evidence of a certain William Dennison's break for freedom. It's good to know that at least one person made it out of here. Heat. Heat.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Archeologists Uncover Prisoner Remains At A Victorian Jail"?

PC Roelly Earl (Guest), Sergeant Grant Warick (Guest), Dr. Blake Tyson (Guest), Phil (Guest), Corenza, Jim (Guest), Stuart, Richard Morris.

What is "Archeologists Uncover Prisoner Remains At A Victorian Jail" about?

Archaeologists are investigating the historical site of Applebee Police Station in Cumbria, which has housed various prison facilities since the mid-1700s. Their goal is to uncover evidence of the former jail cells and learn more about the hundreds of prisoners who were incarcerated there, including those who faced transportation or execution, all within a tight three-day timeframe.

What is mentioned in this Timeline - World History Documentaries episode?

12 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Applebee Police Station, Applebee prison, Victorian prison regime, Applebee jail, Sergeant Grant Warrick, Time Team. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Archeologists Uncover Prisoner Remains At A Victorian Jail"?

The episode runs 49 min; the transcript is about 7,517 words in 156 timestamped sections.

More from Timeline - World History Documentaries

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 24, 2026.