Behind the bars of Northern Ireland’s notorious Crumlin Road Gaol

When I’m browsing information panels in overseas galleries, museums, streets and the like, any mention of Australia makes my eyes widen and my interest pique that little bit more.

One sign in the basement of the Crumlin Road Gaol is especially arresting for me. It lists some of the prisoners that were held here while awaiting transportation Down Under in the mid 19th century.

Some, like brothers David and Joseph Drennan, aged 14 and 18, sentenced to seven years transportation for larceny, apparently made it out of here. Others didn’t and died at this infamous Belfast jail.

They include John McKenna, aged 20, who had been sentenced to 10 years transportation for burglary. That’s the name of my late Irish-born grandfather, but it’s not him. He was born about 50 years after the transportation of prisoners to Australia and Tasmania was halted (it’s reckoned that about 50,000 Irish convicts were banished there between 1791 and 1867).

Although the Emerald Isle has spawned many McKennas, I can’t help but wonder if that particular John was a distant relative as I roam around this jail, which was a working prison from 1845 to 1996, playing witness to fraught episodes of Northern Irish history, before being converted into one of the province’s most popular visitor attractions.

It’s also an events and wedding venue, and has been a location for photo shoots, films, documentaries and music videos.

This foreboding complex, built with black basalt rock, was designed by Sir Charles Lanyon, the English architect behind many of Belfast’s major landmarks. You’ll learn about Sir Charles and other influential characters on a self-guided jail tour, where you follow arrows around the corridors, wings and cells. At some points virtual actors in period costumes pop up on screens, playing roles like the prison governor and officers.

The jail’s first prisoners — 106 of them, six described as “lunatics” — were marched here from another jail in Carrickfergus, a town 18km north of Belfast.

Many of the cells here at Crumlin Road are now themed on certain topics, and contain exhibits and details of the jail’s births, deaths and marriages, rooftop protests, prison life, escapes, bombings and the roots of Northern Ireland’s religious-political division.

Eamon De Valera, former president of the Irish Republic and a leading figure in Ireland’s quest for independence from Britain’s occupation, was arrested for “illegally” entering Northern Ireland in 1924 and held here in solitary confinement for a month.

In 1966, Ian Paisley, the proudly pro-British leader of Northern Ireland’s Unionist movement, was imprisoned at Crumlin Road for three months.

Thousands of other political prisoners were locked up here during the Troubles that afflicted this province between the 1960s and 90s, although the ones deemed most dangerous, with links to paramilitary groups, were transferred to the even more infamous Maze prison in nearby County Down. We get a peek inside the narrow, eerie underground tunnel that brought prisoners to this jail from the courthouse on the other side of Crumlin Road.

Long-mooted plans to convert the dilapidated neoclassical courthouse into a luxury hotel have yet to come to fruition, not helped by the fact that it has been periodically blighted by fires (some deliberate) since closing in 1998.

Some of the most affecting exhibits on this jail experience pertain to punishment. You’ll see a large flogging rack that was used for corporal punishment (the rulebook said the number of lashes or strokes may not exceed 36 for over-18s and 18 for under-18s). Children as young as 10 were imprisoned here back in the Victorian age.

Arguably the most chilling part of the tour is visiting the cell of the condemned man, which is connected to the execution chamber, where you’re faced with a noose, trapdoor and an audio-visual wall display featuring a moving silhouette of a figure being led to his fate. Seventeen men were executed at Crumlin Road (the last, for murder, in 1961) and most were buried in unmarked graves within the jail’s perimeter.

This tour is fascinating, but has its bleak moments, though it’s occasionally leavened with treacle-black humour, both from the virtual prison staff you encounter along the way, and at the places you can stop at for refreshments. There’s The Last Drop, a tiny pub that has photographs of the Pierrepoints, a well-known family of English executioners, some of whom oversaw hangings at Crumlin Road (including Albert Pierrepoint, who was also a pub landlord in England).

And at Cuffs Bar and Grill, at the tour’s end, the menu stars The Executioner Burger. After listing its ingredients (an Ulster steak burger with bacon and trimmings), there’s a tongue-in-cheek question: “will it finish you off?” Keen to make it out of this jail alive, unlike another McKenna, I resist the temptation and head for lunch in Belfast’s city centre.

+ Steve McKenna was a guest of Tourism Northern Ireland and Tourism Ireland. They have not seen, influenced or approved this story.

Fact file

+ The Crumlin Road Gaol Experience is open daily and priced from £14 ($27) for adults, £12 ($23) concessions and £7.50 ($13.50) for children. crumlinroadgaol.com

+ To help plan a trip to Northern Ireland and Ireland, see discovernorthernireland.com and ireland.com