Speaker 1: If you're enjoying Haunted UK Podcast on the road, please
Speaker 1: consider supporting the show on Patreon or Coffee. Just search
Speaker 1: for the Haunted UK podcast to find us. I'm traveling
Speaker 1: the length and breadth of the UK speaking to those
Speaker 1: who work within some of the country's most intriguing places.
Speaker 1: Have a location with a story or an experience you
Speaker 1: can't explain, email contact us at hauntedukpodcasts dot com. I
Speaker 1: might be on the road to you next. Now sit
Speaker 1: back and enjoy the episode. On the sixth of September
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, I was given exclusive access to one
Speaker 1: of the most notorious and historically charged locations in Britain,
Speaker 1: Oxford Castle and Prison, a site that has stood for
Speaker 1: nearly one thousand years, a fortress, a prison, a place
Speaker 1: of execution, and, according to many who work within its
Speaker 1: ancient walls, a place where the past may not be
Speaker 1: entirely at rest. After sitting down for interviews with members
Speaker 1: of the team, hearing first hand accounts of unexplained experiences
Speaker 1: from those who know the building best, I was granted
Speaker 1: something few ever experience, a personal tour after the doors
Speaker 1: had closed.
Speaker 2: To the public.
Speaker 1: So before we get into it, a little bit of
Speaker 1: history for you. Oxford Castle was built in ten seventy
Speaker 1: one following the Norman conquest by a baron loyal to
Speaker 1: William the Conqueror. Over the centuries, it evolved from a
Speaker 1: military stronghold to a county prison, one that held everyone
Speaker 1: from petty criminals to condemned murderers. The prison remained operational
Speaker 1: until nineteen ninety six, marking nearly a millennium of continuous use.
Speaker 1: Within those walls, executions, torture, and unimaginable suffering became part
Speaker 1: of its legacy. So to help us unravel more of
Speaker 1: this building's haunted past, I'm joined by Kessia, who knows
Speaker 1: these walls better than most. Kessia, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for being our guide. To begin with, could you tell
Speaker 1: us a bit about yourself, your role here at Oxford
Speaker 1: Castle and Prison, and how long you've been part of
Speaker 1: its story.
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: So, I am one of the operations duty managers here
Speaker 4: at Oxford Castle Prison. I've been here for about five
Speaker 4: years nearly, and I've kind of done everything a little bit.
Speaker 3: So yeah, got a lot of stories.
Speaker 1: I only touched briefly on the castle's long and complex history.
Speaker 1: Could you take us a little bit deeper into its origins,
Speaker 1: who built it and what are some of the most
Speaker 1: pivotal moments in its timeline.
Speaker 4: So it originally started off as an Anglo Saxon settlement,
Speaker 4: and then a Norman baron called Robert Doyley comes along
Speaker 4: and besides, this is going to be the perfect place
Speaker 4: for a castle, so he builds the castle around Saint
Speaker 4: George's Tower, which is the oldest part of the site.
Speaker 4: It's just over a thousand years old. And then eventually
Speaker 4: the castle gets destroyed at the end of the English
Speaker 4: of a War, and about one hundred years later, a
Speaker 4: man called Daniel Harris decides that this is the perfect
Speaker 4: spot to build his dream prison, so he builds it
Speaker 4: exactly as you see it today. The only exception is
Speaker 4: a wing which is just next to us here and
Speaker 4: that is now part of the hotel. But that was
Speaker 4: built by the Victorians, and that's the last part of
Speaker 4: the site to be completed.
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, Are there any historical figures or prisoners who
Speaker 1: stand out to you personally, and if so, what makes
Speaker 1: their story so compelling?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: So for me, I would say our prisoner Isaac Darkin,
Speaker 4: who was here in the seventeen hundreds. He was hanged
Speaker 4: for being a highwayman, and he was only twenty one
Speaker 4: when he was executed. But in about four years of
Speaker 4: his life he had I would say, the most incredible
Speaker 4: and I guess.
Speaker 5: Movie like existence.
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 4: Where he was a highwayman, he he took over his
Speaker 4: father's business of cork cutting, which then failed. He joined
Speaker 4: the army, he joined the navy. He uncovered a plot
Speaker 4: to kill a guard on a ship, and he because
Speaker 4: he snitched on them, they gave him a full pardon.
Speaker 3: He deserted both.
Speaker 4: The army and the navy. He went to the Caribbean.
Speaker 4: He came back, became a hioman again. He got into
Speaker 4: a bit of a sticky situation in I think he
Speaker 4: was in Bath, and they again gave him a full
Speaker 4: pardon there. And then it kind of all comes crashing
Speaker 4: down in nettle Bed where he helds up, holds up
Speaker 4: the wrong guy, and he's eventually arrested and brought here
Speaker 4: where he's executed. But he is said to have been
Speaker 4: quite the ladies man whilst he was here. If he
Speaker 4: ever held up a carriage full of ladies, he had
Speaker 4: them all get out and dance with him. Instead of
Speaker 4: stealing anything from them.
Speaker 3: And he would here.
Speaker 4: He would make sure that his hair was done nicely
Speaker 4: every day, and he always had his best clothes on
Speaker 4: because people would of course come and visit the prisoners
Speaker 4: in prison. And he was always reading. That's been recorded
Speaker 4: as he was a bit of a bookworm and he
Speaker 4: was a total ladies man.
Speaker 1: And all of that in twenty one years.
Speaker 3: In four years. He started that age seventeen.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, okay, so yeah, a twenty one year of existence,
Speaker 1: but four years. He crammed all of that into four years.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So there are rumors of hidden tunnels and forgotten cells
Speaker 1: beneath the castle. So what do we actually know about
Speaker 1: these spaces?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So the hidden tunnels are a link between the
Speaker 4: old magistrates court and the prison and they are still there.
Speaker 4: They link the one particular cell up into the dock
Speaker 4: of the courtroom, and it's so that we could transport
Speaker 4: prisoners without them being seen by the public before their trial,
Speaker 4: and then as soon as their trial was done, they
Speaker 4: would come back down. We believe that the saying you're
Speaker 4: going down or you've been sent down comes from us,
Speaker 4: because we're one of the first recorded places to have
Speaker 4: these tunnels linking and after they would have been sentenced
Speaker 4: to go back to prison, the judge was say send
Speaker 4: him that down right, Okay, that's how they'd come across.
Speaker 1: So something about the tunnels as well. You've got a
Speaker 1: very very famous paranormal investigated turning gop here very soon. Yes,
Speaker 1: And I think you mentioned earlier that the tunnels were
Speaker 1: going to be opened up and you guys are going
Speaker 1: to actually be able to go down there. Yeah. Are
Speaker 1: you allowed to say who the ghost hunter is?
Speaker 4: Yeah, we've got Barry guy coming down to share his expertise.
Speaker 2: Right, Okay, what time does that start? On the evening?
Speaker 4: So the whole event starts at eight o'clock and then
Speaker 4: they get a little Q and a session with him,
Speaker 4: a little.
Speaker 3: Meet and Greek, and then the X.
Speaker 4: The investigation starts at about eleven o'clockish. We're going to
Speaker 4: start off in the tunnels and then we're going to
Speaker 4: come back over to the site and then they get
Speaker 4: free reign of the site.
Speaker 2: Okay, what time does it finish? Time?
Speaker 3: About midnight?
Speaker 2: Right? Okay?
Speaker 1: Okay have you organized this event? You speaking around for it?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: When you first started working here, KSI, did anything strike
Speaker 1: you as unusual. Were there moments that made you pause?
Speaker 4: Say, not, particularly when I first started. When I first started,
Speaker 4: I was in the gift shop every day, so there
Speaker 4: wasn't a huge amount that happened there. Occasionally we'd have
Speaker 4: things like fall off shelves and things like that, and
Speaker 4: there was always a bit of a rumor that there's
Speaker 4: a little ghost that likes to mess around in the
Speaker 4: gift shop, but we're not too sure about that. But then,
Speaker 4: as I've been here a bit longer, you start to
Speaker 4: pick up on things. When I was tour guiding, multiple
Speaker 4: people would tell me similar things, and I know that
Speaker 4: they wouldn't have spoken to each other because there'd be
Speaker 4: like days weeks apart. They wouldn't have known each other.
Speaker 4: So you start to pick up on a few like, oh,
Speaker 4: maybe there is something in this room, and then yeah,
Speaker 4: there's there's been a few other a few other little
Speaker 4: situations which I'm not too sure about.
Speaker 2: Would you like to elaborate on.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So about two years ago now, I think it was,
Speaker 4: we were just finishing up our Halloween tours and our
Speaker 4: last group of the evening was a school group. They
Speaker 4: were running late, so I opened the door to go
Speaker 4: and tell the tour guide that his tour was running late,
Speaker 4: and I saw him walk in full costume down the
Speaker 4: prison way. Called out to him, he didn't answer. Called
Speaker 4: out to him again, and he came out from the
Speaker 4: staff room at the top of the stairs, which wouldn't
Speaker 4: have had time because that door was locked. He wouldn't
Speaker 4: have had time to get all the way up there
Speaker 4: open and closed that door without me hearing. Because I
Speaker 4: was stood right underneath it. I thought it was a
Speaker 4: bit strange. I told him, with the group were running late,
Speaker 4: I walked out, closed the door, didn't think any more
Speaker 4: of it, so just carried on. Yep, because I think
Speaker 4: because it was near Halloween. I was like, you know,
Speaker 4: what a bit strange. I'm just gonna just gonna ignore it.
Speaker 4: And then about two or three months later, I was
Speaker 4: on my own here in the building opening up and
Speaker 4: the first team member arrived to start opening up as well,
Speaker 4: and he came in and was like, oh, I've just
Speaker 4: seen this team member in full costume walk down the
Speaker 4: prison wing. I thought, no, you haven't. I'm the only
Speaker 4: one here and that team member is not working today.
Speaker 4: So we went for a little walk around the site
Speaker 4: just to make sure that nobody had broken in, couldn't
Speaker 4: find anybody. That team member wasn't in at all that day,
Speaker 4: so we were quite confused.
Speaker 3: Again. We were like, maybe it's just a trick of
Speaker 3: the light.
Speaker 4: We'll think no more of it, and then I know.
Speaker 4: November last year, I did a went with Kieren o'keeith
Speaker 4: and I told him this story, but I didn't tell
Speaker 4: him what the tour guide looked like. I didn't tell
Speaker 4: him what he was wearing. And at the end of
Speaker 4: the night, his team came up to me and said,
Speaker 4: we saw this person walking down this corridor, which is
Speaker 4: where both of me and my other colleague had seen
Speaker 4: a figure, and they described him perfectly. He had quite
Speaker 4: a distinct haircut and the costume that he would would
Speaker 4: have worn was the Victorian prisoner outfit. And he wasn't
Speaker 4: working that night. I had no tour guides working that night.
Speaker 4: It was just myself and one other colleague. And yeah,
Speaker 4: it was a bit a bit freaky that three different
Speaker 4: people have seen this same thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and even from Keira and O'Keefe's guys as well,
Speaker 1: So that's a been unusual with with Keraan. Would you
Speaker 1: say that the atmosphere shifts once the public leaves. And
Speaker 1: have you ever felt that the building changes when it's quiet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it kind of relaxes a little bit.
Speaker 4: It's almost like, Okay, nobody's here, we can just sort
Speaker 4: of breathe a little bit. I definitely say that the
Speaker 4: atmosphere does change sometimes. Sometimes when you're hair and you're
Speaker 4: on your own, you're kind of hyper aware of everything.
Speaker 4: But there's also some times where it does just feel
Speaker 4: like there's lots of other people with you, even if
Speaker 4: there's nobody else on site.
Speaker 1: Okay, I've got to ask this question. You mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: when we were chatting before this that there is one
Speaker 1: room in this castle that you kind of get the
Speaker 1: creeps in.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: What is that room? And why do you get the creeps?
Speaker 1: What is it about this room?
Speaker 4: I genuinely don't know. I So we called this room
Speaker 4: Real Matilda's Room, and it's in Saint George's Tower, which
Speaker 4: is the oldest part of the site.
Speaker 2: Which will be going to see as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's the room that we think Empress matter
Speaker 4: Order was kept in when she was here in eleven
Speaker 4: forty two during the anarchy, and we know that she
Speaker 4: escapes from the tower, but we're not entirely sure of how.
Speaker 4: The story says that she ab sails down the side
Speaker 4: of the tower, which is pretty cool, but we're not sure.
Speaker 4: But that room, it really unsettles me. I don't know why.
Speaker 4: I try to avoid it if I can, it just
Speaker 4: I don't know why. I just get a bit of
Speaker 4: a who feeling when I go in it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, putting aside the Kiran o'keef thing and that siting,
Speaker 1: that that triple sighting of that, that.
Speaker 2: That spirit or whatever it.
Speaker 1: Was, in your opinion, what is the most convincing story
Speaker 1: or piece of evidence that suggests to you that something
Speaker 1: supernatural may be going on here?
Speaker 3: I would say the crypt.
Speaker 4: So when I was a tour guide, I would have
Speaker 4: multiple people on my tours tell me that there were
Speaker 4: two presences in the crypt. One was worse than the other.
Speaker 4: They could never work out if the less bad one
Speaker 4: was trapped there or was there to protect us from
Speaker 4: the really bad one. I've had multiple people tell me this,
Speaker 4: I've had I've supervised other ghost hunts. They've also come
Speaker 4: and told me a similar thing. And that for me
Speaker 4: is the thing where I'm like, maybe something is happening
Speaker 4: if multiple people are saying the same or a similar
Speaker 4: thing about one room in particular.
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, finally the big question, do you believe Oxford
Speaker 1: Castle is truly haunted or is it just simply the
Speaker 1: pair of suggestion?
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know.
Speaker 2: You're not going to sit on the thing.
Speaker 4: I think I am, because like, there's lots of things
Speaker 4: that happen, but because we work here, I think a
Speaker 4: lot of it we just kind of brush off because
Speaker 4: we don't want to think about it too much.
Speaker 3: And so I'm not sure. I'm really not sure.
Speaker 4: I think maybe that there is something here. I don't
Speaker 4: know whether it's potentially as like really bad as some
Speaker 4: people have said, but yeah, I don't know for sure.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm really surprised that some of the hours
Speaker 1: that you guys work here and you're you're really in
Speaker 1: this building pretty much on your own at times, just
Speaker 1: wandering around checking things, and it doesn't spook you or
Speaker 1: creep you out.
Speaker 3: Or anything like that.
Speaker 4: No. I think I get used to it, and I
Speaker 4: kind of there's definitely times where I can work out
Speaker 4: which noises are just the building settling or me having
Speaker 4: walked through some creaky floorboards. Things like that. But yeah,
Speaker 4: there are there are times where there's other noises, but
Speaker 4: because I'm here.
Speaker 3: On my own, I don't want to think about it
Speaker 3: too much.
Speaker 4: So I'll just brush it off, explain it away.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, thank you so much for sharing your insights
Speaker 1: and experience. But this isn't the last we're going to
Speaker 1: hear from yourself, Kessea, because soon you're going to be
Speaker 1: taking me on a personal tour of the castle and
Speaker 1: we'll be recording every moment, so if something happens, you're
Speaker 1: all going to be right there with us. So thank
Speaker 1: you so much.
Speaker 3: You're welcome, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: So that brought my conversation with Kessia to a close
Speaker 1: for now. As I mentioned earlier, we'll be hearing from
Speaker 1: her again later in the episode. But as the evening
Speaker 1: went on and the light outside the ancient walls began
Speaker 1: to fade, it was time to sit down with someone
Speaker 1: who sees a very different side of the building. Hailey Weiss,
Speaker 1: the marketing manager for Oxford Castle and Prison, works at
Speaker 1: the heart of preserving and presenting nearly one thousand and
Speaker 1: years of history. Yet beyond the brochures, guided tours and
Speaker 1: heritage events, Haley has had experiences of her own, moments
Speaker 1: that are hard to explain, Moments that remind you that
Speaker 1: this isn't just a historic attraction. It's a place with
Speaker 1: the past that still lingers. Here's my conversation with Hailey Weiss.
Speaker 1: So I'm now joined by Haley. Haley welcome, Thank you.
Speaker 1: Could you give us a quick rundown on who you are,
Speaker 1: what you do here, your role?
Speaker 6: Yes, So I'm the marketing manager here at Oxford Castle
Speaker 6: in Prison and I've been here for just literally just
Speaker 6: over a year now by maybe a couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: So right, Okay, have you experienced anything strange here at all?
Speaker 1: Because I know that you mentioned earlier that you were
Speaker 1: quite skeptical.
Speaker 6: I think I have. Again, yes, it's do I want
Speaker 6: to admit it? Maybe not, but yeah, I've had some
Speaker 6: strange occurrences.
Speaker 1: Okay, would you be prepared to go into those strained currencies?
Speaker 6: Yes, they're all quite similar in a way. So how
Speaker 6: long ago was it when I first came? But so,
Speaker 6: part of my routine in the morning is when I
Speaker 6: come in and Keziah well know this as well, is
Speaker 6: when I come in, I say good morning three times.
Speaker 5: As soon as I.
Speaker 6: Get from the gift shop into the main prison wing.
Speaker 6: And I feel like I don't know where it started.
Speaker 6: I don't know why I started doing it, but now
Speaker 6: I feel like I have to keep doing it because
Speaker 6: I've get scratches on my arm. Now if I don't.
Speaker 2: Say it scratches on your arm.
Speaker 6: It's only really on my left arm that I've had it.
Speaker 6: I've had a couple of my right but it was
Speaker 6: And the only reason like I noticed it was because
Speaker 6: there was a few days where I'd go, oh, I
Speaker 6: haven't said it, because I was just rushing to get in,
Speaker 6: and I'd sit down in my chair and I'd be like, okay.
Speaker 5: There's another scratch there.
Speaker 6: And I thought, okay, you know, first time, you know,
Speaker 6: that's just a bit weird. You know, I must have
Speaker 6: caught something. And it happened again again. It was on
Speaker 6: a busy day. I came in and again I had another,
Speaker 6: but this time it was rather than it being on
Speaker 6: like my arm, I had it on the top of
Speaker 6: my hand. And again I thought, okay, right, something odd's happening. Now,
Speaker 6: rushed off again. Third time again another scratch. Yeah, I've
Speaker 6: had it about five times now.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 6: The only the last one was actually just about a
Speaker 6: month ago.
Speaker 5: Again it was rushed.
Speaker 2: Okay, they need to always when you forget to.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so I say it every time, and so I thought, okay, look,
Speaker 6: this just feels a bit weird.
Speaker 5: Let me just check. And so I was like, is
Speaker 5: it my worktop?
Speaker 6: And I'd even say to have my other colleagues like,
Speaker 6: am I going insane? It's not my worktop? Nope, it's
Speaker 6: not the worktop. Okay, is it my coat? No? It
Speaker 6: was wearing different coats bag, no, different rucksack I was wearing,
Speaker 6: And I thought, okay, what am I catching it on?
Speaker 6: So I would I still haven't found a reason why
Speaker 6: this has sort of been happy. So that's why I
Speaker 6: kind of say it's a bit weird because I haven't
Speaker 6: found the reason for it. But the only thing that's
Speaker 6: I know that has stayed the same is I haven't
Speaker 6: said good morning.
Speaker 1: That is absolutely intriguing because when I interviewed Amy Hickman
Speaker 1: at Dudley Cassar, she does exactly the same thing. She
Speaker 1: says good morning to the building every time she goes in,
Speaker 1: and she will say goodbye to the building, and she
Speaker 1: said it's some sort of tradition she's always, always done it.
Speaker 1: You've got no idea where that came from. Did the
Speaker 1: person before do it.
Speaker 6: Or I don't know because we didn't really I didn't
Speaker 6: really have a crossover.
Speaker 1: With Do you kind of feel that the building relaxes
Speaker 1: in a sense or is it.
Speaker 6: It's a different Yeah, it's a different energy. I feel
Speaker 6: like that's in the space. It's when it's it's you know,
Speaker 6: when it's open in the public around, you get that
Speaker 6: busy vibe. But as soon as yeah, it's we close
Speaker 6: the doors, it feels quieter. But it doesn't feel empty.
Speaker 6: So like I've been alone in the mornings. When I
Speaker 6: come in, I'm often the first person in, sometimes by
Speaker 6: like half an hour to an hour, and still you
Speaker 6: don't feel fully on your own, Like it feels just
Speaker 6: a bit something. I don't really know how else to
Speaker 6: word it, but it just you don't feel alone. Even
Speaker 6: though you know the site's locked up. You're the only
Speaker 6: one in. I haven't unlocked any other doors because I
Speaker 6: wait until somebody else arrives before I unlock the door. Yeah,
Speaker 6: it's a I feel like the place has its own
Speaker 6: sort of I don't know, it feels like it has
Speaker 6: its own personality as well. It doesn't feel like just
Speaker 6: a building. It feels like more of like a living
Speaker 6: sort of space.
Speaker 1: If that makes nodding at the corner as well, then
Speaker 1: she's she's agreed. I'd like to ask a similar question
Speaker 1: that I asked Kesse earlier, which was is there a
Speaker 1: particular spot in this castle? And I know there is
Speaker 1: because you said it a little while ago. That gives
Speaker 1: you the creeps, because I know you've got quite a
Speaker 1: famous cell here that was built specifically for someone in particular.
Speaker 6: Yes, so we have the padded cell that was built
Speaker 6: purpose built for Donald Neilson, who was known as the
Speaker 6: Black Panther. So that that is my space that I
Speaker 6: feel the most uncomfortable in. Yeah, I'm quite happy in
Speaker 6: other parts, even the crypt. I still quite enjoy going
Speaker 6: into the crypt. But the paddid cell is the space
Speaker 6: that you won't really catch me in.
Speaker 5: I don't like it. I don't like how it feels.
Speaker 6: And it just that that sort of space just feels
Speaker 6: when I've said like the place feels like it's got personality,
Speaker 6: that the place feels like it's just cold, like it's
Speaker 6: just it's just not the right vibes for me.
Speaker 1: Okay, was that self just constructed for him or were
Speaker 1: other people kept in it afterwards or so it.
Speaker 6: Was originally constructed for him, but I do believe it
Speaker 6: was still used afterwards to hold people in.
Speaker 2: And it just gives you the croups.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah, I don't like it at all.
Speaker 1: Okay, final question is Oxford Castle and Prison haunted? Do
Speaker 1: you think that there is an aura about this building?
Speaker 1: You think there is something about this building that has
Speaker 1: harbored and kept spirits, ghosts whatever you want to call them,
Speaker 1: from years ago. Do you think that those spirits are
Speaker 1: still wandering around this building and interacting with staff and
Speaker 1: yourself and the public.
Speaker 6: I think I'd be kidding myself if I said it no,
Speaker 6: because there is stuff that I just I can't explain
Speaker 6: from my experiences that other colleagues just can't explain. So
Speaker 6: something something must be going on. But again, I work here,
Speaker 6: so I don't really want to Yeah again.
Speaker 1: Before you go, what is that work dynamic?
Speaker 7: Like?
Speaker 1: I mean, if one, if you have an experience, save
Speaker 1: Ke sees something or another member of staff see something,
Speaker 1: are you quite open with each other in the way
Speaker 1: that you will approach each other and say, look, there's
Speaker 1: just something really strange just happens in X, Y or Z,
Speaker 1: or do you kind of keep it to yourself for
Speaker 1: a little while and then talk about it or are
Speaker 1: you quite open? No?
Speaker 6: I think we all sort of we only find out
Speaker 6: after we've had sort of similar experiences. It feels like
Speaker 6: we're like, for myself, like I've kept that to myself
Speaker 6: because yeah, I don't know, you know, you don't want
Speaker 6: to feel like you're persuading.
Speaker 5: Other people, priming them exactly, and they go, do you
Speaker 5: know what? That's weird?
Speaker 6: And so it's usually when somebody else has gone, I've
Speaker 6: had that, then then we do we all kind of
Speaker 6: keep it away because nobody really wants to admit it
Speaker 6: to selles.
Speaker 5: I believe, I believe here.
Speaker 6: But Kezi and I we do end up talking going, oh,
Speaker 6: something odd's happened.
Speaker 5: And she'll go, okay, yeah, gone tell me what's happened.
Speaker 5: And then I tell her.
Speaker 6: She's like, yeah, I had that a few years ago,
Speaker 6: or so yeah, so and so had something similar, and
Speaker 6: You're like, oh, okay, right says yeah, there's patterns in
Speaker 6: some of these, but we don't know about them until
Speaker 6: we both experienced them or somebody so yeah.
Speaker 2: Well thank you.
Speaker 1: So much for joining me, and again and thank you
Speaker 1: so much for helping organize this fantastic event for me
Speaker 1: personally and for the show in such an amazing location.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Hayley, No, thank you, Steve.
Speaker 6: It's been a pleasure to have you here and to
Speaker 6: be able to share our experiences more than we ever
Speaker 6: have before.
Speaker 5: So thank you.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't just Kessia and Hayley who were kind
Speaker 1: enough to share their personal experiences within these ancient wars.
Speaker 1: Two other members of staff also stepped forward, each with
Speaker 1: their own unsettling accounts of strange moments and unexplained incidents
Speaker 1: inside Oxford Castle and Prison. And what struck me most
Speaker 1: was this. These weren't dramatic retelling shaped for effect. They
Speaker 1: were calm, matter of fact, the kind of stories told
Speaker 1: by people who aren't trying to convince you of anything,
Speaker 1: only to describe what they experienced. I didn't ask leading questions,
Speaker 1: I didn't prompt for drama or embellishment. I simply let
Speaker 1: the recording role and allowed them the space to tell
Speaker 1: their stories in their own words, exactly as they remembered them,
Speaker 1: and in a building with nearly one thousand years of
Speaker 1: history behind its walls. Sometimes the quietest accounts are the
Speaker 1: ones that stay with you the longest. Here are their experiences.
Speaker 8: My name is Jessica and I'm currently the sales secutive
Speaker 8: at ox the Caltropism. I used to work as a
Speaker 8: tour guide and I've been here for four years.
Speaker 7: I really love.
Speaker 8: History, which is what drew me to the place, and
Speaker 8: I really have Since working here, I've become really interested
Speaker 8: in prison reform, particularly because there was such a history
Speaker 8: of prison reform here at Oxor Castle, and I just
Speaker 8: find that the actions of the people trying to make
Speaker 8: lives better for the people who are imprisoned here and
Speaker 8: so inspiring. And just the way in which this place
Speaker 8: has inspired prisons across the country and really pushed for
Speaker 8: better prisons is just really important and I think it's
Speaker 8: really valuable. My experience here happened while I was a
Speaker 8: tall guide, so it was about three years ago now,
Speaker 8: and I was doing a tour and I was talking
Speaker 8: about our youngest prisoner, who was called Julianne Crumpling, and
Speaker 8: she was just seven years old when she was imprisoned here.
Speaker 8: She had stolen a pram and she was sentenced to
Speaker 8: seven days imprisonment here and I was telling her story
Speaker 8: to a tour group that were in front of me,
Speaker 8: and I was standing in the midd of the room.
Speaker 7: There was nothing behind me, and as I was.
Speaker 8: Talking, I could feel something pulling at the back of
Speaker 8: my skirt.
Speaker 9: My name is Jade. I am currently a tour guide
Speaker 9: at Oxford Castle in Prison. I've been here for around
Speaker 9: about two years and a lot of my experiences happened
Speaker 9: in the crypt, mostly in the crypt. Actually, the one
Speaker 9: that really stays with me because it was just very unexplainable.
Speaker 7: Is I was standing at.
Speaker 9: The back of the crypt, like the deepest in you're
Speaker 9: going to get, and I was facing a tour group
Speaker 9: basically with my back to the wall, and I'm in
Speaker 9: the middle of like kind of giving this whole story
Speaker 9: talking about the crypt, and I hear very loud, very clear,
Speaker 9: a growl.
Speaker 7: Coming loud.
Speaker 9: I can't really pinpoint the location of it, just because
Speaker 9: it's quite echoey in the crypt, so it's hard to
Speaker 9: distinguish where it was.
Speaker 7: But it was a very.
Speaker 9: Loud, human like something was definitely off about it, but
Speaker 9: it was not like a deep rumbling growl like you
Speaker 9: hear from animals.
Speaker 7: It's very much like a guttural growl.
Speaker 9: And he tingles, and I just remember stopping kind of
Speaker 9: mid sentence and looking around the room at the like
Speaker 9: at my tour group, to see if anyone else had
Speaker 9: heard it, and like, I'm just staring at blank faces.
Speaker 7: No one's registering it.
Speaker 9: And then I make eye contact with one person who
Speaker 9: like just like has the same bewildered face as me,
Speaker 9: and just like nods and yeah, I sort of it's
Speaker 9: kind of surreal being a tour guide because when it happens,
Speaker 9: if you're with tour gud like tour groups, you kind.
Speaker 7: Of just have to continue doing on doing your job.
Speaker 7: So I just kind of I was like, Okay, well strange,
Speaker 7: let's continue and kind of spread up the tour after
Speaker 7: that to get out of the crypt as soon as possible.
Speaker 7: And my other thing that happened to me personally, but.
Speaker 9: Funnily enough, a similar experience happened to my brother, who
Speaker 9: also worked at the castle.
Speaker 7: On the same day. We don't know if it was
Speaker 7: at the same time, but I was in the crypt training.
Speaker 9: A new tour guide, and so I was basically shadowing.
Speaker 7: Her tour, and I was.
Speaker 9: I was standing at the back of the crypt while
Speaker 9: they gave their whole thing in the front. I was
Speaker 9: just I remember I was leaning against the wall of
Speaker 9: the crypt and tour guys, we have a radio with
Speaker 9: an earpiece that goes around our ear just so that
Speaker 9: we can communicate with each other.
Speaker 7: And I remember just so clearly hearing like a breath.
Speaker 9: Like a on the earpiece, and so I was like, Okay,
Speaker 9: maybe that's a radio call, but obviously I I work,
Speaker 9: I used to work like pretty much four days a
Speaker 9: week here. Radio calls like and radio staf I take
Speaker 9: are very familiar noises to me, and this was just
Speaker 9: not that.
Speaker 7: It was like a human like. I even felt it.
Speaker 9: Like there was an air blowing on my ear and
Speaker 9: like I got the goose pumps around it. It was oh,
Speaker 9: it's freaky and yeah, and it was like on my
Speaker 9: right ear, and I'm I'm watching as this happens.
Speaker 7: I'm watching the tour guide and uh, there she's not.
Speaker 9: Obviously, when you're new, it's hard to focus with the voices.
Speaker 7: In your ear.
Speaker 9: So sometimes new tour guides will take it out so
Speaker 9: that they can focus on getting out, and she it
Speaker 9: just doesn't register on her.
Speaker 7: Face at all that there's been a radio call, so
Speaker 7: I'm like, ah, okay.
Speaker 9: So that was one time where I was like, oh,
Speaker 9: that is going to be difficult to explain in my
Speaker 9: logical brain, and only to find out later in the
Speaker 9: day when me and my brother were taking the bus home,
Speaker 9: that he'd had pretty much the exact same experience upstairs
Speaker 9: in the gift shop. So he was working behind the
Speaker 9: desk talking to a group that had just come out.
Speaker 7: And he just has this like on his ear as well,
Speaker 7: and he kind of looks around and there's like no
Speaker 7: one around him, and obviously he just continues on.
Speaker 9: But it was so strange just having such similar experiences
Speaker 9: on the same day that we just didn't tell each
Speaker 9: other until after the toy was Yeah, it was freaky.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I'll tell my brothers hang on. One of them
Speaker 7: is written down.
Speaker 9: So my brother Cameron, he he was the manager on site,
Speaker 9: so he kind of did the open up and the
Speaker 9: closing and all that stuff, and.
Speaker 7: The most jarring. Like me and my brother, like we
Speaker 7: watch horror movies.
Speaker 9: We enjoy that kind of spookier stuff, but we're not
Speaker 9: dead set on the fact that it Ghoest exists, Like.
Speaker 7: You know, we're very sort of in the middle area,
Speaker 7: if you can say, on the fence of it.
Speaker 9: But this is one of the only times I've truly
Speaker 9: seen my brother be shaken up telling the story where
Speaker 9: he was the last person on site locking up for
Speaker 9: the night and he's in the gift shop, and the
Speaker 9: way the gift shop works, you have to turn a
Speaker 9: lock on a pole to set the alarm and then
Speaker 9: leave and then lock the door. So he was going
Speaker 9: to do that and he was looking down at this
Speaker 9: lock to lock it, and he just like basically hackles
Speaker 9: stand up on the back of his neck, his head
Speaker 9: just stands on end, and he instinctively looks up around
Speaker 9: and he just watches this shadowy figure glide quickly past
Speaker 9: him to the other side of the room, like it
Speaker 9: wasn't out of the corner of the eye.
Speaker 1: Thing.
Speaker 9: He instinctively looked up to be like, is there's something
Speaker 9: here and he.
Speaker 7: Sees this shadowy figure walk across.
Speaker 9: And yeah, that is the one in which my brother
Speaker 9: is like, yeah, he was very.
Speaker 7: Disturbed by that. He's also had an experience in the Crypt.
Speaker 9: I don't know what it is about the crypt, but
Speaker 9: obviously with its history, I don't know if Kezy has
Speaker 9: told you about it. You know, it's more likely to
Speaker 9: be one of the more active places. But his experience
Speaker 9: was he was also on a close up at the
Speaker 9: end of the day, all the lights were turned off,
Speaker 9: and he was going to check the fire escape to
Speaker 9: make sure it's locked, and he wanted to me to
Speaker 9: specify that he has excellent peripheral vision, and he was
Speaker 9: walking to the fire escape across the crypt and he
Speaker 9: very obviously sees a hand reach out to grab his arm,
Speaker 9: which he kind of obviously he called that. So he
Speaker 9: looks and he sees nothing. But yeah, that's one thing
Speaker 9: that he's just like Jay.
Speaker 7: That I can't explain that.
Speaker 9: I have no idea, It was just yeah, yeah.
Speaker 7: So the crypt is a sort of.
Speaker 9: Chamber built beneath the church that used to lie on
Speaker 9: our site currently where the more modern prison buildings are currently.
Speaker 9: Used to be a sort of chapel called Saint George's Chapel,
Speaker 9: and this was built in.
Speaker 7: Ten seventy four, so a long.
Speaker 9: Time ago, and the crypt was the only lasting bit
Speaker 9: of this because the rest was destroyed by the parliamentarians
Speaker 9: and this crypt actually ended up being buried for about
Speaker 9: one hundred and fifty years but this crypt, so you'll
Speaker 9: probably see it if you go there.
Speaker 7: It's what you'd imagine the catacombs to be like. It's
Speaker 7: kind of a.
Speaker 9: Chamber, a hollow chamber with these beautiful pillars holding up
Speaker 9: the roof.
Speaker 7: And what they use this for essentially was to store bodies.
Speaker 9: So what would happen is that if someone died, they'd
Speaker 9: transport their body to this crypt and it would act
Speaker 9: as a morgue essentially, and there they would prepare them
Speaker 9: in whatever.
Speaker 7: Burial they would.
Speaker 9: And the monks would perform sort of religious rites, and
Speaker 9: then they would transfer them to the graves in the churchyard.
Speaker 7: So this.
Speaker 9: Room started off currently as a.
Speaker 7: Quite an ominous place to be very very I mean
Speaker 7: just very.
Speaker 9: Deeply ominous, how I say, And then.
Speaker 7: I'm not I wouldn't be able to tell you how they.
Speaker 9: Used it going further, but I do know that the
Speaker 9: prisoners also spent some time in this crypt as well,
Speaker 9: because when they rediscovered it in the late seventeen nineties,
Speaker 9: the current owner the prison now made these prisoners rebuild.
Speaker 7: The crypt, and so you'll actually see two of.
Speaker 9: The pillars in there are only about two hundred years
Speaker 9: old because the prisoners built.
Speaker 7: Them and.
Speaker 9: The Yeah, so the prisoners spent quite a lot of
Speaker 9: time down there as well, doing their manual labor, doing.
Speaker 7: Their hard labor. And you can actually see there's still
Speaker 7: the foundations of the original church that they dug up
Speaker 7: are in there. You'll be able to see that. But
Speaker 7: the reason I feel so drawn to the crypt is
Speaker 7: not only because it's quiet, but because the energy in
Speaker 7: there is just so strong, but not entirely in.
Speaker 9: A negative way, like a lot of times when like obviously,
Speaker 9: when you hear a growl and the crypt, you go
Speaker 9: straight to anything demonic like, But it's more like you
Speaker 9: get the feeling when you go into the crypt that
Speaker 9: whatever is.
Speaker 2: In there.
Speaker 7: Just wants peace and quiet. And so if you abide
Speaker 7: by those rules, you know, they kind of welcome you in.
Speaker 9: But if you're a tour guide like me and you
Speaker 9: talk and you project your voice, they get a bit
Speaker 9: upset with that. But it's it's naturally a terrifying place
Speaker 9: to be, but I find it quite comforting to be there.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 9: One thing I do like to stay to scare the
Speaker 9: guests is because the crypt is underground.
Speaker 7: It's beneath what we used to be the Victorian prison cells.
Speaker 7: The earth around the crypt is all burial site.
Speaker 9: So because as we moved on from being a castle
Speaker 9: to being a prison, we began.
Speaker 7: Just burying prisoners and unmarked graves essentially.
Speaker 9: So whatever there used to be a moat around, they
Speaker 9: filled that in with bodies and so when they excavated,
Speaker 9: they were everywhere.
Speaker 7: And so the.
Speaker 9: Ground that's literally surrounding this chamber is a burial site essentially.
Speaker 9: So even while you're in there, you can feel the weight.
Speaker 7: It's very very obvious. Yeah, and it's heavy.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 1: We now entered the final segment of what had already
Speaker 1: been an incredible day, the personal tour. While Hailey joined
Speaker 1: us for parts of the evening, it was predominantly Kessia
Speaker 1: and myself walking those historic corridors together. And what an
Speaker 1: opportunity this, truly was, to be guided through the entire
Speaker 1: site by someone who not only knows the prison inside
Speaker 1: and out, but who understands how the building breathes, how
Speaker 1: it settles, how it changes once the public have gone
Speaker 1: home and silence takes over. This wasn't a standard tour.
Speaker 1: This was after hours, empty landings, shadows stretching a little
Speaker 1: further than they do during the day, so now let's
Speaker 1: return to the recording and journey through Oxford Castle and
Speaker 1: Prison as the darkness slowly descends.
Speaker 2: Okay, where are we right now?
Speaker 4: So we are in the base of Saint George's Tower,
Speaker 4: which is the oldest part to the site, dates back
Speaker 4: to around ten o nine. Okay, so we know it
Speaker 4: was built by the Anglo Saxons following Saint Bryce's Day
Speaker 4: massacre to protect the town from any further Viking invasions
Speaker 4: and then this war. Here we believe is the last
Speaker 4: standing wall of the Norman chapel, Saint George's Chapel.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is really imposed, and this is so impressive.
Speaker 1: We're looking at as Kesey said that a huge wall
Speaker 1: which has got to be thirty maybe forty threet high
Speaker 1: or something like that, and this massive the arch that
Speaker 1: leads to what would.
Speaker 2: This have been?
Speaker 4: So this is one of the very first rooms in
Speaker 4: Saint George's Chapel, sorry, Saint George's Tower. And you can
Speaker 4: see three circles on the floorboards. Yep, those are footpaths
Speaker 4: that walked into these solid oak floorboards over twenty years
Speaker 4: by Victorian prisoners.
Speaker 2: I thought those boards were walked. That is actual trial
Speaker 2: path of those.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so in the middle just here, Yeah, we had
Speaker 4: a device called Capston wheel. So just behind that wall
Speaker 4: is the castle mill stream and there used to be
Speaker 4: a mill.
Speaker 2: Attached to it.
Speaker 4: And this is the only known surviving example of a
Speaker 4: Capston wheel being used as hard labor in an English prison.
Speaker 4: So the caps and wheel was in the middle, and
Speaker 4: the mechanism underneath the tower was connected to the water wheel,
Speaker 4: and that pumped water to the tank room, which will
Speaker 4: be going into later, and then three sets of prisoners
Speaker 4: per spoke would pushing this wheel for total of we
Speaker 4: believe about ten hours a day.
Speaker 2: Ten hours a day.
Speaker 4: We think they'd have done it in rotations of two
Speaker 4: hours and gone off to do a different punishment after
Speaker 4: two hours.
Speaker 1: But yeah, again, we'll be tanking a photo of this
Speaker 1: because you seriously have to see the oak flooring.
Speaker 2: Because it looks warped.
Speaker 1: But when you do start to look at it closely,
Speaker 1: you can see the path that has been worn in
Speaker 1: that circular pattern of those people that were constantly moving
Speaker 1: that wheel around and around.
Speaker 2: Brilliant. Let's move on.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're going to go up the tower.
Speaker 1: Okay, so Cassio has now brought me into Matilda's room.
Speaker 1: And we've had to get to this via a kind
Speaker 1: of a short, thin corridor, but a drop signed a
Speaker 1: good side three feet from the actual the actual spiral
Speaker 1: staircase that runs at the tower. What is the story
Speaker 1: behind this class?
Speaker 4: So this is one of the first I guess prison
Speaker 4: cells that we have in the castle. We've held prisoners
Speaker 4: here since twelve sixteen. They were the first prisoners were
Speaker 4: actually the drunken radish students of the university. But in
Speaker 4: eleven forty two we actually held prison Matilda prisoner here
Speaker 4: for about three months. So this was during the civil
Speaker 4: war known as the Anarchy, and she held the castle
Speaker 4: whilst her cousin, who was King Stephen, held the rest
Speaker 4: of the town, so she had no way to escape.
Speaker 4: But it is said that she escaped by climbing out
Speaker 4: of this window, abseiling down the tower and then ice
Speaker 4: skating down the frozen river to Abingdon.
Speaker 2: Indian Absolutely.
Speaker 4: Are yeah, I'm actually not sure. I know that the
Speaker 4: tower in full is about eighty two foot all so,
Speaker 4: and we are in the first kind of the first
Speaker 4: room halfway up, so we're not even halfway, I would say.
Speaker 2: And this is the room that you spoke about it.
Speaker 2: You don't.
Speaker 4: I don't like this one.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 1: I've walked out as you walk in here for the
Speaker 1: doorway either onto the right hand side in the corner
Speaker 1: which you mentioned.
Speaker 4: Yes, this is where I mostly have to go because
Speaker 4: I have to go chrack a fire alarm.
Speaker 1: There was a reading on the EMF meter that literally
Speaker 1: after a number of seconds, it didn't peak hugely, but
Speaker 1: it did give a high reading and then completely disappeared.
Speaker 1: And I haven't been able to find the reading since
Speaker 1: it wasn't due to the recording equipment and it wasn't
Speaker 1: due to my mobile phone. There is nothing else around
Speaker 1: that I can see, and it is dark, Kesier and
Speaker 1: eyelt literally in literally the light that's coming from the
Speaker 1: short the short corridor, and the light that's coming from
Speaker 1: this absolutely ominous small window with lots of bars. And
Speaker 1: where are we going next?
Speaker 4: We're going to go up to the next room, further
Speaker 4: into the tower.
Speaker 2: Fantastic, let's go right, Okay, I have to describe this room.
Speaker 1: It's probably twenty five maybe thirty feet square, literally hugely
Speaker 1: high walls and these massive buttresses literally I suppose you
Speaker 1: could call the more supports that are supporting these huge
Speaker 1: iron rs jays that are holding some sort of tanks
Speaker 1: of what room are we in here and.
Speaker 2: What history is helding here? This is spectacular.
Speaker 4: So this is actually the room that we call the
Speaker 4: Civil War room because in the sixteen forties during the
Speaker 4: English Civil War I mentioned, King Charles uses it as
Speaker 4: a prisoner of war camp for parliamentarians. And actually, thanks
Speaker 4: to Johnnilburn, we know that sometimes he kept sixty men
Speaker 4: in this room at one time.
Speaker 1: Wow, yeah, okay, that kind of puts a bit of perspective.
Speaker 2: Doesn't it. That feels a big room into the two
Speaker 2: of us just stood here a book. Yeah, sixty So.
Speaker 4: We can only have twenty five people in this tower
Speaker 4: today at one time legally okay.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 4: Sixty men and there were three rooms to this tower,
Speaker 4: so that is not just sixty men per this room,
Speaker 4: that sixty men to all three rooms. So at one
Speaker 4: point he is recorded to have just over one hundred
Speaker 4: and twenty prisoners in this tower.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 4: And Johnnilburn's reports also tell us that they were fed
Speaker 4: twice a week, there were no toy a week, ye,
Speaker 4: They weren't allowed to leave to use the toilets. They
Speaker 4: had to go where they stood they if they died
Speaker 4: in here, they probably stayed here for up to six
Speaker 4: months because the room was only cleaned around once every
Speaker 4: six months.
Speaker 1: Smell, yeah, not the defecation in and then you've got
Speaker 1: a corpse.
Speaker 4: Or corpses, and also people that were still alive. They
Speaker 4: were tortured as well in here.
Speaker 3: We don't know.
Speaker 4: They they did find bones when they took up the floor.
Speaker 2: You're saying people were tortured in here as well.
Speaker 4: Not necessarily in here, but definitely in the castle.
Speaker 3: We do have the name of a gentleman that.
Speaker 4: Would the king's prison keeper. He would take people out
Speaker 4: and burn their fingers so that I think the direct
Speaker 4: quote is that their flesh ran like wax, so they
Speaker 4: could not pick up arms against the king.
Speaker 3: Again.
Speaker 4: Okay, so it's quite a heavy room.
Speaker 1: I would say, well, we're going to see if we
Speaker 1: can get a reading from this and then we'll move on.
Speaker 1: We're they're in the tank crew, give us a description
Speaker 1: of this place and some of the history.
Speaker 2: That there's ground into the walls. This is fantastic.
Speaker 4: So this is the final room in the tank. In
Speaker 4: the tank, this is the final room in the tower.
Speaker 3: It is kind of as high as it goes.
Speaker 4: So you've got the roof just kind of pointing upwards
Speaker 4: because they would have been a watch tower at the top,
Speaker 4: so that the because this was a defensive tower of
Speaker 4: the city, we could see over the walls and see
Speaker 4: the River Thames to see if anybody was coming up
Speaker 4: to attack us like the Vikings did. But after the
Speaker 4: water tanks were put in the room, as far as
Speaker 4: we know, was.
Speaker 7: Not used.
Speaker 4: Because the tanks would have been full of water, so
Speaker 4: there had been no flaw in here.
Speaker 3: And they've just gone for a bit for swim.
Speaker 2: And these are biblical sized tanks. They're absolutely huge.
Speaker 1: And the cross beams that are held up just above
Speaker 1: the tanks. I mean you have to see what you
Speaker 1: probably can't. You're not able to see. This is this
Speaker 1: somewhere that you bring people onto. No, so we are
Speaker 1: actually seeing something that is closed off to the public.
Speaker 2: See what you mean.
Speaker 1: Now about Yeah, you can actually see some of the
Speaker 1: ruptures in the tanks.
Speaker 2: They are absolutely vast and as Kessia.
Speaker 1: Said, you could quite easily if they were full of water,
Speaker 1: go for a swim.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we are right at the top of the tower.
Speaker 1: Now you may hear a little bit of wind coming
Speaker 1: through the windshield.
Speaker 2: What is the mound?
Speaker 4: So that is a man made hill that was built
Speaker 4: by over eight hundred Anglo Saxon slaves in around two
Speaker 4: months to be the mott of the Motte and Bailey Castle. Right,
Speaker 4: So there would have stood a ten sided keep at
Speaker 4: the top of it. We believe it stood probably around
Speaker 4: the height of the trees that we can see. And
Speaker 4: then the mound itself would actually have been clay, not grass,
Speaker 4: because all the soy around here is clay and the
Speaker 4: whole point of it is a defensive mechanism. So if
Speaker 4: people actually did manage to get through the moat and
Speaker 4: up the hill, you'd slide straight back down in your
Speaker 4: full chain mail.
Speaker 1: Unbelievable. I've got to say as well. The views of
Speaker 1: Oxford from up here at the they are unbelievable. It's
Speaker 1: absolutely stunning. You're looking at huge amounts of historic towers
Speaker 1: poking themselves above the city scope if you like are
Speaker 1: and then as you turn around you've got fields, beautiful
Speaker 1: fields and woodland the Oxfordshire country and literally to join
Speaker 1: us while we stood.
Speaker 2: Up here, we've got a flock of geese.
Speaker 1: In v formation and there's a tray. Okay, so we
Speaker 1: are in a really really atmospheric part of this place.
Speaker 1: Please describe this to us, Cassi. This is the actual
Speaker 1: room where when you listen to this back and this
Speaker 1: is where I had one of her really disturbing experiences
Speaker 1: with a guttural growl. Give us some description and explanation
Speaker 1: about the history of this place. It's fascinating.
Speaker 4: So this is Saint George's Crypt. It is the oldest
Speaker 4: part of the castle that is still able that you're
Speaker 4: still able to see today. It was built in ten
Speaker 4: seventy four, supposedly after Robert Doyley was visited by an
Speaker 4: operation of Virgin Mary telling him that he'd be going
Speaker 4: to hell for all of the Norman invading.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: So the four pillars that you can see just here
Speaker 4: with all of the carvings on them, these are the
Speaker 4: original four Norman pillars, so they're just over nine hundred
Speaker 4: and fifty years old. And then the three the two
Speaker 4: back here are not as old. They were built by
Speaker 4: Geordian prisoners in the seventeen nineties.
Speaker 2: And Ja had mentioned about this being a burial ground
Speaker 2: or as.
Speaker 4: Such it was the Castle Morgue. So crips are quite
Speaker 4: hold places. They're designed to be essentially a giant fridge,
Speaker 4: and we know that they would have bought the castle's
Speaker 4: dead here, prepared them for burial. And then there are
Speaker 4: passageways just behind these walls here that led up to
Speaker 4: the burial site that's still there, but it's under the
Speaker 4: courtyard area now. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the floor, yes, the original floor.
Speaker 4: We're not sure. We know it's probably original to the
Speaker 4: seventeen nineties. So when the castle was destroyed at the
Speaker 4: end of the English Civil War, the chapel wars as well.
Speaker 4: And then this was actually rediscovered by the Georgian prisoners
Speaker 4: when they were building their own prison in the seventeen nineties.
Speaker 2: What a great job.
Speaker 1: We also walked through a corridor to get here, and
Speaker 1: that you were mentioning that there are foundations from.
Speaker 2: The area sign.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so they're the foundations of Saint George's Chapel. So
Speaker 4: the Norman chapel that was here, which is actually quite
Speaker 4: influential in a lot of our history and also kind
Speaker 4: of history as we know it today because it predates
Speaker 4: Oxford University by one hundred years as a center for
Speaker 4: higher education. And it's also here that the scholar Jeoffrey
Speaker 4: of Monmouth wrote the book A History of the Kings
Speaker 4: of Britain, which is the first written down record of
Speaker 4: King Arthur and Merlin.
Speaker 1: You can't get kind of more revalent than that, really can.
Speaker 1: There are so many layers to this site. As we've
Speaker 1: walked through these corridors, you're getting foundations from one ear
Speaker 1: to foundations from something else to something else. It's just
Speaker 1: been built upon and built upon and built upon it.
Speaker 1: It's truly truly again, especially to be wandering around something
Speaker 1: like this where you know that people have been brought
Speaker 1: down here, the dead of being brought down here and
Speaker 1: left down here, and it's not far off a thousand
Speaker 1: years old.
Speaker 2: Now when do you look.
Speaker 4: It's definitely a bonus somebody that loves history. It's so
Speaker 4: cool to be able to see it all every day.
Speaker 4: Even the roof here, the ceiling, it's been rebuilt from
Speaker 4: rubble from the old castle and the old chapel, so
Speaker 4: we like, for example, just here we've got a lock
Speaker 4: in the ceiling and we believe that came from the
Speaker 4: old castle keep. Again that's kind of just a little
Speaker 4: bit of speculation, but it's just really cool things like
Speaker 4: that that just little hidden bits that people might not know,
Speaker 4: might not see every day they come down.
Speaker 2: Here we get to so where do we venture to next?
Speaker 2: The prison wing, lead the wine. Okay, the prison room. Yes, wow,
Speaker 2: look give us some insight, Kessie, tell us about this place.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So the cells were built in about seventeen ninety
Speaker 4: and they were originally built to hold one prisoner in
Speaker 4: each room.
Speaker 3: Two entrances.
Speaker 4: You had one here and one on this side of
Speaker 4: this wall that would have gone straight out into the
Speaker 4: exercise yard. The victorians then brick those up and put
Speaker 4: in bars in the window on one side of the wall,
Speaker 4: so that way you get fresh air coming in because
Speaker 4: they believed my asthma's bad air. So that way I
Speaker 4: was supposed to get rid of the diseases because of
Speaker 4: the second door. Here, we were in two cells. So
Speaker 4: when we closed, we were used for filming for a
Speaker 4: little bit. And then the archaeologists came in because we
Speaker 4: are historic site. On top of a historic site. He
Speaker 4: had got permission to knock down some walls, dig up
Speaker 4: the floors, see what they could find.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we are in Mary Blandie's space. And before
Speaker 1: this whole interview started, I was correctly.
Speaker 2: What would you call it. I was correctly.
Speaker 1: Instructed to change the script, but I decided to get
Speaker 1: rid of an entire paragraph, and it was it was
Speaker 1: Cassie was absolutely one hundred percent right.
Speaker 2: But we are now in.
Speaker 4: Taking away Mary Blandie's room. So we call this cell
Speaker 4: Mary Blandee's room, because that's the story that we tell
Speaker 4: in here. However, she actually never stayed in the prison
Speaker 4: wing because she was rich enough to rent two rooms
Speaker 4: from the prison governor inside his own.
Speaker 2: House, right, hewlen was she here for?
Speaker 4: She was not here very long. I think about six
Speaker 4: months in total she was here. I think she was
Speaker 4: sent here in seven Well, she was sent here in
Speaker 4: seventeen fifty one, and then she was executed in March
Speaker 4: seventeen fifty two.
Speaker 1: And that is the story of Mary Blanding. I got
Speaker 1: it totally wrong, but there you go. We all make mistakes, Okay.
Speaker 1: So where are we now, Casey at this place looks
Speaker 1: absolutely astonishing.
Speaker 4: So this is Debtor's tower. It is. This is the
Speaker 4: bottom floor of or the ground floor of Debtor's tower.
Speaker 4: We've got the bars up to kind of mark out
Speaker 4: where the cells would have roughly gone, and you'd be
Speaker 4: here in the evening the people money, but during the
Speaker 4: day you'd be expected to work. You'd collect your pay
Speaker 4: and give it to the governor to pay the debt. Yeah,
Speaker 4: of course.
Speaker 1: Okay, so this this guy on the wall, here, this
Speaker 1: this well on the bars. Thomas Williams, twenty six years
Speaker 1: on crime. Shop breaking. What was shop breaking?
Speaker 4: What it says on the tin shop?
Speaker 2: Yeah, six months hard labor.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so hard labor would have been anything from the
Speaker 4: capst and wheel to something that we have called chot drill,
Speaker 4: which is where you it sounds a lot worse, it's
Speaker 4: not much better. You have a pile of cannon balls
Speaker 4: one end of the courtyard and you have to pick
Speaker 4: them up, one at a time and take them down
Speaker 4: the other side of the courtyard and build up a pile.
Speaker 4: Once you've done that, you have to pick it up
Speaker 4: and do it all over again in the same direction.
Speaker 2: So there was no purpose to it.
Speaker 4: It was literally there was no purpose to a lot
Speaker 4: of hard labor. The whole point of it is to
Speaker 4: break you down physically and mentally. Some of it did
Speaker 4: have purposes. The things that we gave to the women
Speaker 4: and children, cleaning laundry, also oak and picking was given
Speaker 4: to them. That's where you pull apart a rope until
Speaker 4: it's just the fibers, and then we would so we'd
Speaker 4: often buy these ropes from the Navy and then sell
Speaker 4: them back to the navy, which is where we get
Speaker 4: saying money.
Speaker 2: Frog groupe Wow. Okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: And then they would use that to fix the ship
Speaker 4: or mattresses, pillows, that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Any spooky panormal experiences.
Speaker 4: In here, I haven't know. But this is the room
Speaker 4: that Jess had her tour group. She stood just there, okay,
Speaker 4: where she felt the tugging on her skin.
Speaker 2: Yes, and again you will hear that story.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: A lot of a lot of deep, deep history here,
Speaker 1: a lot of deep deep history. So this guy was
Speaker 1: actually here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, So we don't exactly know which cell he
Speaker 4: was in or anything, but we know he was here.
Speaker 4: This is the first kind of record of prisoners that
Speaker 4: we have here, well, sort of visual record of the prisoners.
Speaker 1: And I've seen something projected onto a wall through here,
Speaker 1: and that's a similar thing.
Speaker 4: So this is a record of different prisoners from different ages.
Speaker 4: So we've got this is Julia. She was our youngest prisoner.
Speaker 4: She was only seven years old when she was arrested.
Speaker 3: She's still a pram.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah. And then we've got a couple of
Speaker 4: the other mugshots of some of the children that were
Speaker 4: arrested and brought here throughout the years. These ones are
Speaker 4: all from the eighteen seventies, eighteen seventy to eighteen seventy one.
Speaker 4: And then we've got some from the nineteen twenties. So
Speaker 4: this gentleman was arrested in nineteen twenty nine and brought here.
Speaker 4: It's where we start seeing the kind of side profile
Speaker 4: of our prisoners, some of the men that were brought
Speaker 4: here in the eighteen seventies as well, including some women.
Speaker 4: Elizabeth Elizabeth Hinton, I think her name is, yeah, Reconcile
Speaker 4: West my favorite. I don't really know what he did.
Speaker 3: I just absolutely love the name.
Speaker 4: But yeah, like you can really see in their faces
Speaker 4: as well, Like there's so young some of them, As
Speaker 4: I said, Julia was only seven. We had one little
Speaker 4: boy who was called George Jordan. He was here by
Speaker 4: the age of eight. He had been here three times already.
Speaker 4: So for his third sentence, he was sentenced to four
Speaker 4: months of hard labor and to be whipped twelve times
Speaker 4: with a birch rod.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Okay, so our last location which brings us to our
Speaker 1: journey's end is totally fascinating. Straight looking at photo of Donald,
Speaker 1: Neil said the black panther the one and only and
Speaker 1: it was actually.
Speaker 2: His own cell.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, so this is the padded cell. It was
Speaker 4: built specifically for him within ten days in the hospital wing.
Speaker 4: So this top section of the prison wing was renovated
Speaker 4: in the nineteen seventies to make way for a hospital
Speaker 4: wing which has been described as a cottage hospital, right,
Speaker 4: and then in ten days they had to build this
Speaker 4: cell for him because he was our only Category A prisoner.
Speaker 4: We were a Category CEA prison Yeah. And he was
Speaker 4: kept here during his trial which happened over at County
Speaker 4: Hall what is now County Hall, and.
Speaker 2: Then he was moved to Norwich Norridge.
Speaker 1: Yes, well, I can't thank you all enough for this
Speaker 1: fascinating to all.
Speaker 2: We've been on a really really scooky journey.
Speaker 1: Actually there's been some strange readings on the MF meter,
Speaker 1: but they may have an explanation, they may not. Thank
Speaker 1: you Cassia, it's so much for not only the interview
Speaker 1: but be my guide today. Thank you Hailey as well,
Speaker 1: and give me a thank you. Give thanks to the
Speaker 1: other members of stuff who were kind enough to share
Speaker 1: their stories as well. So I'm about to leave Oxford
Speaker 1: Castle in Prison. Thank you both so much, Thank you
Speaker 1: very much. As we come to the end of this episode,
Speaker 1: I want to say a huge thank you to Kessia
Speaker 1: and Hayley, not only for organizing this incredible opportunity, but
Speaker 1: for being so generous with their time, so open with
Speaker 1: their experiences, and so genuinely welcoming from the moment I arrived.
Speaker 1: My thanks also go to the other two members of
Speaker 1: staff who step forward to share their personal accounts. It's
Speaker 1: never easy speaking publicly about experiences you can't fully explain,
Speaker 1: and their honesty is what made this episode what it is.
Speaker 1: I truly can't recommend a visit to Oxford Castle and
Speaker 1: Prison enough. It's a place like no other, a place
Speaker 1: with its own atmosphere, its own rhythm, and its own presence.
Speaker 1: It's clear that the people who work there don't just
Speaker 1: maintain the building. They understand it, They care for it,
Speaker 1: They respect it, some even talk to it. They are
Speaker 1: part of the story now just as much as those
Speaker 1: who passed through its walls centuries ago. And when you
Speaker 1: stand inside those ancient stones after dark, you can't help
Speaker 1: but feel that perhaps the building remembers Until next time,
Speaker 1: stay safe and take care running Corvid here, I remember
Speaker 1: the day that I used to do lots of cockaps,
Speaker 1: and here's a couple voy you right now. You didn't
Speaker 1: think it all went that well?
Speaker 2: Did you?
Speaker 1: To help us unravel more of this building's haunted past.
Speaker 1: I'm John by Kessia, who knows these walls better than most. Cassia,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining us today and being
Speaker 1: our guide to begin with, could you tell us a
Speaker 1: bit about yourself and your role here at Oxford Castle
Speaker 1: and Prizle doing that again French?
Speaker 5: Sorry, God, a crap at French.
Speaker 1: I'm recording that as well. I won't put that in
Speaker 1: the outside. So I'm now joined with