Oldest prison receives top heritage status

31 August 2009

MEDIA RELEASE

Oldest prison receives top heritage status

Fitting of its purpose, New Plymouth Prison has been locked in as a Category I historic place by the New Zealand Historic Places Trust (NZHPT).

The prison, dating from the 1870s, is the country’s oldest still operating. Today it is used as a minimum to high-medium security facility for 112 prisoners, plus offenders on remand.

NZHPT Central Region Heritage Advisor Blyss Wagstaff said the prison had considerable heritage values and its design reflected the strict Victorian attitude to punishing offenders. Though the prison complex has been added to over time the basic layout and original fabric has remained intact. The cells, for example, at 2.1 x 3 metres (7ft x 10ft) are understood to be the smallest in the country.

The prison is historically significant because the country’s second oldest operational prison, Mt Eden in Auckland, is undergoing a major redevelopment which will see its original prison facility shift from housing inmates to use as a staff and administration block.

Under the Historic Places Act (1993), places with “special or outstanding historical or cultural heritage significance or value” may be accorded the highest ranking of Category I status.

“New Plymouth Prison represents many layers of outstanding historical and cultural heritage. As well as being the oldest operational prison in New Zealand it has valuable architectural and technological designs dating to the Victorian period. Aesthetically the stone walls and interior make for a forbidding place to be,” Ms Wagstaff said.

“The prison also has strong associations with the Taranaki Wars of the 1850s to 1860s in being the site of a military hospital for the nearby barracks, and before that for Maori in being the site of Pukaka Pa.”

Infamous prisoners at the prison have included Robert ‘The Highwayman’ Wallath who terrorised New Plymouth in the early 1890s by committing a series of armed robberies, and George Wilder who escaped by scaling one of the prison’s highest walls in 1962. Amy Bock who was convicted for impersonating a man in marriage, is also thought to have served time there.

“It’s fair to say many of the inmates probably don’t appreciate the heritage values of the prison as we do today, because it would be a tough place to be sent to,” Ms Wagstaff said.

“Prisoners sentenced to hard labour broke stones at the adjacent quarry, a practice that continued to the 1950s.”

Though New Plymouth Prison was first identified in 1980 as being a place of historic significance by NZHPT, it was not formally placed onto the National Register at that time. The NZHPT is pleased to have worked with the Department of Corrections to now recognise this outstanding historic place through registration.

ENDS

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