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