The history of Sligo Gaol
Sligo Gaol sits on 6.5 acres, it was constructed on virgin land which belonged to the Gethin Estate. It was built to replace an earlier gaol at the site of the present courthouse in Teeling street, Sligo.
Construction of the Gaol began in 1814 and it was ready for partial occupation in 1818, at a cost of £22,000 for the initial building. The total cost for the whole gaol construction was £30,000. Additions to the building included the construction of a perpetual treadmill and improvements to the Marshalsea (debtor’s prison). The Gaol was built by local builder John Lynn. It was designed to hold 200 inmates in a polygonal-shaped building, with the Governor's residence situated at the centre of the prison as an 'all-seeing eye'.
Similar polygonal plan prisons in Ireland were found at Clare (Ennis); Donegal (Lifford); Galway; Leitrim (Carrick-on-Shannon); Derry; Longford; Monaghan; Roscommon; Tyrone (Omagh) and Westmeath (Mullingar). Sligo Gaol is the only remaining polygonal-shaped gaol to survive in Ireland. The Gaol took in prisoners from 1818 but had no infirmary. This was not completed until 1823.
In 1832 there was a cholera epidemic in Sligo. However nobody died in the Gaol since conditions were well maintained. In 1849, at the height of the famine, there were 291 inmates recorded in the gaol and this is the highest ever recorded in the history in the prison. Of those prisoners fifty-five were awaiting transportation to Australia, one hundred and forty-four were under sentence and fifty-three were awaiting trial. There were three recorded as lunatics and eighteen debtors.
In 1851, the Prison Inspector noted that the Gaol ‘has 91 single cells and 21 rooms with beds. The treadmill is employed in raising water, by which the sewers are adequately flushed. Pipe water is furnished for drinking and there is a fountain in each yard. Punishment cells are warmed by pipes’.
Male inmates in the prison were forced to undertake "hard labour". This labour included the picking of oakum, rock breaking and wood chopping. Other forms of male labour included shoemaking, tailoring, carpentry, glazing, and painting, whilst female inmates were employed to sew, knit and wash clothes. All things manufactured in the Gaol were sold to the public and the money placed in the benefit of the prison.
Gas was introduced to the gaol in 1879. This allowed the provision of heating via hot water pipes and earned it the nickname of the “Cranmore Hotel”. The same year Michael Davitt was briefly imprisoned in Sligo Gaol after his speech at the first meeting of the Land League, held at Gurteen, County Sligo.
In 1918, Michael Collins was held in the Gaol after making a speech against conscription to the British army. In his prison diary his recurrent observation is that he could not sleep and ‘must get this wretched mattress changed’. He also records that ‘by standing on my table I can see Knocknareagh.’ A scrawled inscription above the door of one of the surviving cells claims to identify the place of Collins’ incarceration but it is more than likely he was held in the Marshalsea (debtor’s prison).
On 26 June 1920, a party of approximately 100 volunteers from the IRA undertook a raid on Sligo Gaol with the aim of liberating Frank Carty, the OC of the South Sligo Brigade of the IRA and the newly-elected Sinn Féin councillor of Sligo Town Council. IRA members forced open the main gate of the prison and its inner doors. They then forced the night watchman to turn over the keys to the cells and they released Carty who was taken away in a waiting motor car.
Throughout the period of the Second World War a number of German spies were held in Sligo gaol. In September 1946, ten German spies were released from the jail; however, eight of the spies chose to remain in Ireland.
During the 1950's the number of prisoners detained in the prison had dropped to less than 15. Sligo Gaol subsequently closed on the 5th of June 1956 after the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, James Everett passed the Sligo Prison Closing Order. The remaining prisoners were transferred to Mountjoy Prison in Dublin.
In 1961, plans were made to convert the former prison officers' quarters into married quarters for Gardaí. However, this never occured and the Gaol was reappropriated as a storage facility for Sligo County Council. Part of the Gaol was demolished and the site redeveloped as Sligo Fire Station, which was built in 1983. Today, the Gaol is slowly undergoing conservation works. A number of windows have been replaced in order to weatherproof part of the building and the former cells that had been used as storage have been cleared out. Part of the site is headquarters of the local Mountain Rescue Team and Civil Defence, and the local water services.
The Cache
Sligo Gaol is currently not open to the public. Occasionally, however, tours of the Gaol are held, usually during National Heritage Week in August. The Gaol building can be viewed through a gate close to the cache location.
The cache is a small container with room for a log and pencil only. Please exercise caution and common sense when retrieving the cache as it is adjacent to Sligo Fire Station and other emergency services who will need priority access in the case of an emergency. It is also a residential area.
Text courtesy of C. Doyle, Sligo. Additional text by BinnGhulbain.