'Lock up' roundhouses - rogues beware!

Local Lock Ups

There are five lock-ups (or round houses) in and around the National Forest area - at Breedon on the Hill, Packington and Worthington within the district of North West Leicestershire and at Smisby and Ticknall in South Derbyshire.

Lock-ups are also known as round houses, cage, lobby, watch house, blind houses and clinks - and you could call them the beginnings of the policing system we have today....

They're small, windowless stone buildings that can be square, rectangular, octagonal or occasionally circular.

Evidence suggests that they were most probably used for confining drunks - who were usually released the next day, with no record kept of those incarcerated.

As well as confining drunken villagers, the lock-ups were also used to detain local rogies and vagrants until they could be moved on to a town ans were used as temporary holding places for offenders being brought before the magistrate.

The earliest recorded lock up dates from the 13th Century and most fell out of use when police stations established their own holding facilities

Read more about one of our lock ups: Worthington Round House leaflet (PDF Document, 0.37 Mb)

Packington  

Lock-up of C18. Small red brick 1 storey building of octagonal plan with pyramidal octagonal brick roof. Stone and stone ball finial.

Stone string course between walls and roof. Rounded arch doorway in front angle contains C20 door.

Breedon on the Hill

Lock-up with small attached pound. Probably C18. Rubble stone. Lock-up is circular, with conical stone roof and wrought iron weathervane with later cock finial. Old board and stud door with pierced metal grille and long strap hinges. No windows. Pound, to left, is irregularly shaped and has walls about 2 m high, with dressed stone coping. Incorporated in wall to street is a frag- ment of moulded C12 masonry with dogtooth ornament. C20 wooden gate. The Round House was last used for prisoners in 1885.

Smisby

 The Smisby lockup is octagonal in shape, brick built with tiled spire roof and and has a heavy studded door.

Ticknall

In Ticknall, after the constable had gone home, the drunken prisoners were sometimes released by the landlady of the local public house - whose back door key fitted the lock-up!