History
Construction of the Grade II listed prison was completed in 1869, and was officially opened on 25 June 1868, to replace the New Bailey Prison in Salford, which closed in 1868. The prison designed by Alfred Waterhouse in 1862, with input from Joshua Jebb, cost £170,000, and had a capacity of 1,000 inmates. Its 234 feet (71 m) ventilation tower (often mistaken for a watchtower) has become a local landmark. The prison's walls, which are rumoured to be 16 feet thick, are said to be impenetrable either from the inside or out.
The prison has an element of the Panopticon with its plan a star or a snowflake shaped building, with two block housing a total ten wings emanating from a central core where the watchtower is situated. The prison building consists of two radial blocks branching from the central core with a total of ten wings (A, B, C, D, E, F in one block, and G, H, I, K in the second).
It was built on the grounds of Strangeways Park and Gardens, which gave the prison its original name. Its name is first recorded in 1322 as Strangwas, and seems to come from Anglo-Saxon Strang-gewæsc = " stream with a strong current".
The prison was open to both male and female prisoners until 1963 when the facility became male-only, and in 1980 it began to accept remand prisoners.
As of 2005 the prison held just over 1,200 inmates.
Read more about this topic: HM Prison Manchester
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