The Village Lock-Up.
This is a Grade II Listed Building.
This Jail, formerly a wellhead, was built in the 17th Century and restored in the 20th, and is made of Limestone ashlar.
It is circular in plan, stands 2 metres high with an ogee cap, surmounted by a ball finial. It has a single doorway with a plank door, and has moulded chamfered ashlar jambs, it is similar in design to those at Coleby, Wellingore, and Leasingham.
Village lock-ups' are historic buildings that were used for the temporary detention of people in rural parts of England and Wales. They were often used for the confinement of drunks who were usually released the next day or to hold people being brought before the local magistrate.
A typical village lock-up is a small structure with a single door and a narrow slit window or opening. Most lock-ups feature a dome or spire shaped roof and are commonly built from brick, large stones, or timber. The village lock-up is found in a variety of shapes often round or polygonal in plan, usually freestanding but some are attached to or incorporated in other buildings. Variations in design, materials and appearance occur although they were all built to perform the same function. The majority of surviving village lock-ups date from the 18th and 19th centuries when rural communities struggled to police thefts, burglaries, shootings, drunkenness, the obstruction of watchmen and the stealing of livestock. During this period a number of lock-ups were built as a temporary place of detention for local rogues and miscreants until they could be removed to a town.
Over time they became synonymous with drunkenness and many references to this coupling can be found in famous works of literature, including Barnaby Rudge (1841) by Charles Dickens, and The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby (1863) by Charles Kingsley, which contains the following line:
"Put him in the round house till he gets sober!"
An 1830 description of a lock-up in Taunton describes:
"... a hole into which drunken and bleeding men were thrust and allowed to remain until the following day when the constable with his staff of office take the poor, crippled and dirty wretches before a magistrate, followed by half the boys and idle fellows of the town."
Some lock-ups also had stocks, ducking stools, pillories, or pinfolds alongside them and the origins of the 18th century village lock-up evolved from much earlier examples of holding cells and devices. The Oxford English Dictionary, for example, refers to a round-house as a place of detention for arrested persons and dates its first written usage to 1589.
1. To claim the find: You must include a photograph of YOURSELF and the lock-up, together. For the camera shy, your face doesn't have to be in the photograph, but YOU do! Photographs from the camera shy, can have your face obscured, can also be those taken from behind, or in a hoodie, or from the shoulders down etc, but must show as much of you as you can! A picture of a couple of finger tips holding something barely recognizable, is not acceptable, nor is a photo of poor quality such as being totaly pixelated or out of focus!
The photo of you, must be posted with your OWN log and not on someone elses' log. For each log, you need a separate photo, a group photo will NOT count!
Important: The decision on whether your photo fits our requirements or not, is down to us. If you don't agree...don't log the find!
2. Optional: Please message or e-mail us, the answer to these two questions:
a. What is Ashlar?
b. There are some very famous places in the world where DRY ashlar construction is an important feature, can you name three of them?
IMPORTANT NOTE:-
Two cache icons overlapped each other when looking on the Geocaching map, as the caches are so close together. Since the virtual cache can't be relocated the icon was moved over a bit. The correct co-ordinates are:- N 53° 4.760 W 0° 23.309 or use the Church Micro (GC5038Q) co-ordinates!
Virtual Reward - 2017/2018
This Virtual Cache is part of a limited release of Virtuals created between August 24, 2017 and August 24, 2018. Only 4,000 cache owners were given the opportunity to hide a Virtual Cache. Learn more about Virtual Rewards on the Geocaching Blog.
Picture: By Richard Croft, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9288831