Eleven existing lock-ups have been located in Essex, five of which are timber buildings.
I am extremely grateful to Mike Bardell from Braintree & Bocking Civic Society for his constant supply of photographs and information.
The lock-up at Bradwell-on-Sea is situated in the south east corner of the churchyard in
Eastend Road, CM0 7PW and it dates to 1817. An interesting feature of this lock-up is the pillory/stocks fashioned into the door frame. It is said that six people could be detained inside this little building and another five could be attached to the pillory, which includes one at a suitable level for a child.
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BRADWELL-ON-SEA OS Grid Reference: TM0045806848 OS Grid Coordinates: 600458, 206848 Latitude/Longitude: 51.7245, 0.9010 Photo by Barry Samuel with expressed permission
This photograph is the copyright © of Barry Samuels unless stated otherwise
I am grateful to Barry Samuels (The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain) for allowing me to copy his photograph.
It was Grade 11 listed 10.1.1953 (No.119201) and described as :
Lock-up. C18. Red brick. Pointed hipped red tiled roof with red ridge
tiles.
Dentilled eaves cornice. The heavy 3 board door with iron louvre of 12 vertical slits. Attached vertically to left door jamb are stocks/whipping post with 4 semi-circular wooden grooves and 3 matching and locking iron grooves, lock at base, to right of door are 5 grooves with no locking device. RCHM 7. Listing NGR: TM0045606848
Source: English Heritage
Listed building text is © Crown Copyright. Reproduced under licence: PSI
Click-use licence number C2008002006
http://www.essex-family-history.co.uk/bradwelllockup.htm tells us :
"The lock up at Bradwell-on-Sea was built
in 1817 by Samuel Horne at the cost of £3 10 shillings 9 pence and the pillory
added to in 1823 by attachment of stocks to the outside. When the Constable had
a busy time six prisoners could be accommodated inside the cage and up to 5
people attached to the pillory to become objects of pity or derision to passers
by. One ring on the pillory is very low making it suitable for use with small
children.
Serious cases were kept in the lock up
and then taken to the assizes by the Constable.
The Parish Constables faced a difficult
and dangerous job as is evidenced by the case of Peter Jerome who was a
gentleman of Woodham Mortimer who attacked a Parish Constable with his dagger
drawing blood for which offence she received a fine of six shillings and eight
pence".
 
These two photo's by Ann Williams with expressed permission.
I am grateful to Ann Williams (http://www.adbwilliams.co.uk/photo_topic.php?subject_id=3)
for sending me these two photographs.
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 The lock-up at Braintree, known as The Cage, is situated in Gant Hill off New Street, CM7 1ER and dates to c1840. It has two cells and the door is probably from an earlier building. 
BRAINTREE
OS Grid Reference: TL7570722963 OS Grid Coordinates: 575707, 222963 Latitude/Longitude: 51.8776, 0.5512 All photo's by Mike Bardell with expressed permission It was Grade 11 listed 21.4.1977 (No.113815) and described as : Circa 1840. Small one storey red brick lean to structure with flagstone ceiling Plank door studdes with large nails. Interior has brick built seat along walls. It apparently remained in use for its original purpose until about 1875 when it became a ammunition store for the 12th Essex Volunteer Rifles. Listing NGR: TL7570722963
Source: English Heritage
Listed building text is © Crown Copyright. Reproduced under licence: PSI Click-use licence number C2008002006
 
Inside showing and wall graffiti.
BRAINTREE CAGE
in its
social and
historic setting
The history of human disorder is
as old as the human race as any number of Biblical and other sources show (see
page eight). By the early 17th century the principal inhabitants of
Braintree, doubtless mindful of the cost of sending offenders to gaol at
Chelmsford or Coggeshall, successfully petitioned Quarter Sessions for a house
of correction to be incorporated within the parish workhouse (now the site of
Tesco supermarket in the Market Place). “Drunkness and idlenes” were
clearly an affront to the “Reformation of Manners” which was driven by the
convergence of Protestant zeal, economic and social pressures, and cultural
change. That the poor might concentrate their social life in the alehouse was
unsurprising since the other venue for meeting and conviviality, the church,
had been denuded of much of its festive culture, guilds and fraternities by the
reformers. Alongside the house of correction stood the stocks where public
humiliation, as much as incarceration and physical discomfort, would be brought
to bear on recalcitrant townspeople. These were only removed in 1862 although
their use was greatly diminished by that date.
Drunkenness associated with
market days and the town’s October Fair had been an irritant to the “better
sort” for centuries and it must have been to their astonishment when in 1830,
the Government yielded to the free trade lobby and carried the Beer Act. The
beer trade, it was felt, would benefit from the unfettered operation of market
forces – if the monopoly of licensed houses could be breached, competition
would be increased and demand boosted. Further, liberal Whigs resentful of
unrepresentative bodies like magistrates, who could deprive the worker of his
beer and the publican of his livelihood, felt that liberty was to be prized
above the problem of drunkenness and social disorder. Beer too, it was argued,
had nutritional value and its more ready availability would suppress the sale
of gin, a drink with none.
The Beer Act, 1830 allowed any
person whose name was on the rate book to open his house for the sale of beer
provided he obtained a two guinea excise permit. Character no longer came into
the equation and a person legitimately refused a licence by an honest
magistrate could set up shop and attempt to separate the worker from his hard
earned wages. Over thirty such premises came into being in Braintree with yet
more in Bocking.
The worst fears of the moralists
soon appeared to be fulfilled – drunkenness, late hours, noise, disorder,
music, dancing, gambling and petty crime all increased. Whether this was
directly attributable to beer consumption or by publicans pushing the sale of
gin (forbidden to be sold in beerhouses) is unclear, the real sin of the Beer
Act was to place the control of popular leisure in the hands of lowly beerhouse
keepers and beyond the jurisdiction of magistrates. Power would be returned to
them in 1869 but by then the need for every parish to provide overnight
accommodation – a lock-up or cage – for the restraint of the drunk and
disorderly had become law. The Beer Act too must have been one of the key
factors in the establishment of proper police forces. Braintree had a
proto-constabulary of part time watchmen in 1833, one of the first in Essex, as
a development of the parish constable system ahead of the County Constabulary
which was formed in 1840.
The Braintree Cage is shown, but
not named, on the 1878 Ordnance Survey, scale 1:500, and was approached from
Hilly Gant which linked New Street with St Michael’s Lane (see map, note scale
reduced). Today it can be seen easily from New Street as the buildings which
formerly obscured it have been demolished. It adjoined the garden of the
noted clockmaker Jeremiah Wing, “A citizen of credit and renown”, and,
so his ears might not be assailed by songs of ribald mirth, or his eyes
offended in any way, the cage was built with its high side facing his garden.
The site, given as ¼ pole (6.3 square metres) in the Tithe Award, c1840 was
part of a cottage garden and purchased by the Braintree Churchwardens and
Overseers of the Poor for £30, a considerable sum, on 17 January 1840.
Significantly the vendor was Samuel Tunbridge a Braintree brewer who owned the
nearby Green Man public house (marked with the letters “GM” on map) and whose
landlord in 1839 was Samual Piggin junior, named on the Tithe Award as one of
the parish trustees!
New Street was notorious in those days
containing no less than four pubs – The White Horse, Three Tuns, George and
Green Man. The latter three were known colloquially as “Little Hell”, “Great
Hell” and “Damnation” which gives some indication of their reputations. A
favourite game played in all three was one in which the participant spun around
on the seat of his trousers on the well sanded floor – a novel form of cocktail
shaker –the winner was he who spun furthest! In August 1859 Braintree Petty
Sessions had cause to suspend the Green Man’s licence for six weeks; two years
later Mrs Snow, landlady at the Three Tuns was “cautioned as to the future”.
Ten years on Mrs Snow was described as a “perky little woman quite competent
to hold her own with boisterous agriculturalists”. She may have benefited
personally from legal control but clearly her clientele were still prone to
excess – and presumably endured a night in the cage as an occupational hazard!
To what were they sent for sobering-up?
Construction is of red clay brick
probably of local manufacture, laid in English bond, under a lean-to slated
roof; overall size is 16 feet by 6 feet (4.9 metres by 1.8 metres). Internally
it is divided into two cells each with a single iron grid daylight and
ventilation opening under the eaves of 9 inches by 10½ inches (230mm by
270 mm). The oak and iron studded
outer door pre-dates the building by as much as 200 years and is reputed to
have been removed from the earlier watchouse or lock-up in the Old Workhouse;
the inner cell door has long since disappeared. A timber seat or sleeping
platform ran the length of the left hand side wall and there is a 2 inch (50mm)
thick tooled flagstone ceiling to deny vertical escape; headroom is 6 feet 1½
inches (1.87 metres). Internally the walls have been plastered up to a wooden
dado rail set at a height of 3 feet (920
mm). The floor today is roughly screeded, probably over brick. Construction
costs and legal fees amounted to £45 5s 0d (£45.25p). Most probably the feudal
ceremonial of the “livery of seisin” would have been performed at its
completion, amid cheers of the populace, by Samuel Tunbridge handing over a
loose brick or key to the churchwardens and overseers followed by hospitable
entertainment at the Green Man!
No written account of a night in
Braintree cage is extant but from nearby Stock it has been recorded that simple
incarceration was sometimes exceeded for important or difficult prisoners. In
their case handcuffs or a chain fixed to a bolt in the floor and the leg might
be applied. Occasionally the prisoner’s clothing was removed leaving him to
find comfort in whatever straw or sacking had been provided. The cage at Rayne
contains a chimney and fireplace but this is a rarity. One self-pitying inmate
at Braintree carved “William Oliver Sept 22 1843 committed” into the brickwork
before leaving the cold and discomfort to face a magistrate’s punishment. At
least he went on a full stomach - bread, cheese and beer the commonly provided
breakfast. His name and the date are clearly visible above the dado on the
right hand side of the first cell. Another date of 1843 along with an
indecipherable illustration appears above it. On the opposite wall various
scratched markings are becoming visible as subsequent coats of whitewash and
paint are broken down by the damp conditions.
The year 1843 saw the town’s
first police station built in Rayne Road, however the cage, with its convenient
town centre position, remained in use until 1875. Thereafter it was let to the
12th Essex Volunteer Rifles for the sum of ten shillings (50p) per
annum for use as an ammunition store. “This fine body of men residing in or
around Braintree” was the forerunner of the town’s Territorial Army units,
their volunteer spirit aroused by threats of invasion by Napoleon III. They
paraded at the Corn Exchange in the High Street and conducted live firing at
butts erected in Mr Tabor’s meadow at Bovingdon Hall, Bocking. Though not
recorded, use as an ammunition store probably ceased in 1911 when the town’s
new Drill Hall was opened in Victoria Street.
Braintree Urban District Council
purchased the cage in 1899, thereafter its history was one of neglect until on
21 April 1977 it was recognised as a building of historic importance and given
Grade II Listed status. In 1982 Braintree and Bocking Civic Society undertook
to repair the decayed roof and provide a flagged path to the site. Sadly a
plaque erected by the Society at the time, recording a little of the Cage’s
history, was stolen soon after it was put up – silent testimony to the fact
that anti-social behaviour has not gone away!
For the future this small but
socially significant building will remain in the care of its owners Braintree
District Council and it, along with all historic buildings in the town, will
continue to be a matter of interest and concern to Braintree and Bocking Civic
Society.
First published in 2004 by Braintree & Bocking Civic Society Ltd Copyright © Braintree & Bocking Civic Society Ltd
ISBN 0-9547-490-0-6
The above is copied from a leaflet written by Michael Bardell on behalf of the Civic Society and is available from the shop at Braintree District Museum. I am extremely grateful to Mike for allowing me to copy this information and indeed for the photographs he has sent me.
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The lock-up at Canewdon, known as The Cage, is situated in High Street, SS4 3QA
and dates to c1775.
It was repaired in 1914 and restored in 1983
CANEWDON
OS Grid Reference: TQ8972694543 OS Grid Coordinates: 589726, 194543 Latitude/Longitude: 51.6177, 0.7391 Photo by Mathew Barker with expressed permission. © Copyright Matthew Barker and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.
I am grateful to Mathew Barker for giving me permssion to copy his photograph.
It was Grade 11 listed 27.7.1959 (No.123112) and described as :
Lock-up and stocks. Said to have been erected 1775, repaired 1914.
Timber
framed and weatherboarded. Red tiled roof, gabled to road. Small metal grill to left (west) side. Vertically boarded door, 2 strap hinges with padlock. Crossed metal straps. Stocks on floor inside. Board above door reads VillageLock-up and Stocks. Listing NGR: TQ8972694543
Source: English Heritage
Listed building text is © Crown Copyright. Reproduced under licence: PSI
Click-use licence number C2008002006.
See also : www.rochford.jdi-consult.net/ldf/readdoc.php?docid=150&chapter=6
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