The Clink Prison Museum

The Clink Prison Museum Attraction, Museum Owned by the Bishop of Wi******er, The Clink Prison was used to control the riverside part of Southwark known as “The Liberty of The Clink”.
(719)

The Clink Prison Museum stands upon the original site of the Clink Prison, which dates back to 1144 making it one of England’s oldest, if not the oldest prison. Visitors discover a hands-on educational experience allowing them to handle original and reproduction artifacts, including torture devices, as well as the opportunity to view and hear the amazing stories of the inmates and the notorious Ba

nkside. This area housed much of London’s entertainment establishments including inns, theatres, bull and bear-baiting, c**k and dog fighting and twenty two houses of atrocious but very wide repute - much of this lives on today in the street names of Bankside. The Clink Prison was a small but crucial part of the bishop's riverside palace, called Wi******er House. where he often hosted royal functions and drew the envy of kings. Parts of the Great Hall still stand today, including the world famous Rose Window, preserved by English Heritage. The list of famous names that have visited Bankside during the years of The Clink includes Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, Henry VIII, William Shakespeare, Sir Francis Drake, James I, Samuel Pepys, Dr Johnson and many more, why not join them and explore the prison that gave its name to all others? The Clink Prison.

We often hear grown-ups explaining to children that 'They didn't live as long in those days – everyone was dead by 40', ...
23/06/2026

We often hear grown-ups explaining to children that 'They didn't live as long in those days – everyone was dead by 40', but what is the truth of that? In Shakespeare, Falstaff is on the long side of 70, and this gentleman painted by Rembrandt, looks like he’s over 80 (and so is King Lear); there was also far higher infant mortality than we have today – you were quite lucky if you got to your seventh birthday – and that will bring down the mean average but, even so, the first English monarch to live past the age of seventy five was George II, who died in 1760. None of this really seems to clarify the real question, which is ‘How long could you expect to live in the times of The Clink?’ so we asked our wiser neighbours.

Recalling Sense and Sensibility, Auntie Frances cited a wealthy couple that discuss an annuity to help a widowed relative, but decide against it because she may live another 15 years as ‘she is stout and healthy, and hardly 40’ - clearly indicating that 60 was old, even for gentlefolk - and that was at the end of the Eighteenth Century. (They at least resolve to be neighbourly, which is cheaper than the annuity).

Uncle Tony scratched his head and recalled a survey of grave records indicating that, if we take out infant mortality and death from trauma, and illnesses which we don't die from these days (and war of course, because war casualties have decreased greatly) the average life expectancy in the Seventeenth Century was pretty close to that of the 1950s. ‘A bit less than now’, he said, ‘But more than during the worst years of the Industrial Revolution – bad housing, no sanitation, long hours and poor nutrition – that’s what you need to be dead by 40!’

Follow us on Instagram

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless pupil! There may still be children that would like to have...
22/06/2026

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless pupil! There may still be children that would like to have their teachers executed, but King Henry VIII actually went and did it. John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, was ascetic, studious, conscientious and formidably principled – very like his friend, Lord High Chancellor of England, Sir Thomas More, whom he preceded to the block today in 1535 – and for the same reason – the king’s anger did not spare former teachers, or friends.

John Fisher had previously been chaplain to Lady Margaret Beaufort (Henry’s grandma) and so had been very much a friend of the royal family, hence the popular belief that he tutored Henry as a boy; he is certainly credited (unofficially) with authorship of the king’s book, defending the Catholic Church against Lutheranism (‘The Defence of the Seven Sacraments’) for which the Pope named Henry ‘Defender of the Faith’ and all things between God, Henry, Fisher and the Pope were lovely – until Henry wanted a divorce - at this point, Fisher found himself very much on the side of the wronged Queen Katherine of Aragon and, when Henry demanded signatories to an act of parliament saying he was the head of the church in England, not the Pope at all, Fisher, like More, refused to sign.

As a result of this, both of them were beheaded for treason and, with the monumentally inflated ego of Henry VIII dominating the whole picture (now as then) it’s easy to view both men as the saints that they were made in 1935 – they were very principled man after all – but it’s also useful to remember that, as good Sixteenth Century Catholics, they both firmly opposed the idea of The Bible being printed in English and, confronted with men that very much did want it, they did not oppose their being burned alive – they weren’t just principled enough to die for their faith, they were principled enough to kill for it too.

Planning a visit to The Clink Prison Museum with a group of 10 or more? Make it even more exciting by booking a guided t...
22/06/2026

Planning a visit to The Clink Prison Museum with a group of 10 or more? Make it even more exciting by booking a guided tour!

Our guides can bring history to life—whether you’re up for spooky tales of torture or a fun, educational experience. We’ll tailor the tour to suit your group!

To book or find out more, email [email protected]. We’d love to show you around!

One of the most famous political brains of all time stopped thinking for good (or possibly for evil!) today in 1527; end...
21/06/2026

One of the most famous political brains of all time stopped thinking for good (or possibly for evil!) today in 1527; ending a career of perfectly phrased repartee such as ‘Should a prince be generous?’ - ‘Only with another prince’s money!’; ‘Should a prince patronise the arts?’ - ‘Only by encouraging other people to’; ‘Is it better to be loved or feared?’ – ‘Both if you can be, but if it’s a choice, be feared - but don’t be hated, that’s very dangerous’. ‘Should a prince be honest?’ – ‘Not on your Italian Nelly!’ – these astute observations got him condemned as Satan’s very bedfellow for centuries, and his name is still synonymous with duplicity and guile – Machiavelli.

Niccolo Machiavelli was a diplomat for his native Florence, a job which enabled him to see the checks and balances of realpolitik between city states up very close indeed, but when Florence was taken over by the Medicis in 1512, Machiavelli lost his footing on the political ice-floes and was arrested for sedition; he was tortured by st*****do – being pulled up to the ceiling with his arms behind him, and then dropped – six times, before his final release.

After this, he retired to his family estate to recuperate, living the quiet life of a country gentleman but, at night after the tavern had closed, he would return home, put on his clothes of state and work on his How To Do It book of statecraft, eventually published (and often banned) under the title The Prince, but initially delivered as a job application to Lorenzo de Medici. Machiavelli’s principle was that a Prince should be able to do pretty much anything he had to in order (this is the crucial codicil) to protect the safety of his people. Although his fascinating, insightful, and morally deplorable little book remains in print to this day, and Machiavelli remains something of a hero in Florence, he did not get the job since Lorenzo appears to have considered him too clever by half – and who can blame him?

One of the more unfortunate productions by the Royal Artillery Concert Party in the BBC comedy series ‘It Ain’t Half Hot...
20/06/2026

One of the more unfortunate productions by the Royal Artillery Concert Party in the BBC comedy series ‘It Ain’t Half Hot Mum’ concerned their celebrating the visit of an important dignitary with a play about the Black Hole of Calcutta – with Char Wallah Mohammed doing a rare star turn as a highly pantomimic Nawab of Bengal – only to find that the visiting dignitary was an Indian visiting dignitary, and one very strongly in favour of home rule and British Out - and he did not see the funny side at all. The taste was doubtful in 1977, but it may well have been in 1944 as well – the deaths of 43 (or 123) British prisoners of war really wasn’t a subject for comedy.

The Nawab, Siraj-ud-Daulah, had besieged Fort William in Calcutta with a huge army because the British would not stop building extra fortifications and, when his soldiers took over the city, what members of the British garrison remained were confined over this night in 1756 in a guard room measuring just 14x18 feet. Surviving British official, John Zephaniah Holwell, made a horrific report of British soldiers, Indian sepoys, and Indian civilians so tightly confined that many died from suffocation and heat exhaustion, of their captors claiming to be too afraid of their sergeant to wake him for orders, and of the little water that was passed in being spilled, then panic, then men being trampled and killed.

Whatever the numbers, Holwell’s account paints a terrible picture, and the British retaliated by sending in Sir Robert Clive with a force from Madras which, at the Battle of Plassey, defeated the Nawab’s forces, consolidating British control of the region, setting a foundation for British rule. One condition of peace was that Siraj-ud-Daulah was executed. British rule – The Raj - would last until 1947 and, for a long time, any detractors saying that the country belonged to Indian people really could be answered with a gesture to the Black Hole of Calcutta and ‘Well, we had to, hadn’t we?’

We have already told of Separatist minister John Lothropp, jailed in The Clink before sailing to America in 1634 and fou...
19/06/2026

We have already told of Separatist minister John Lothropp, jailed in The Clink before sailing to America in 1634 and founding a dynasty that lasts, in plentiful number, to this day, which once included the famous gunman of the Old West, James Butler ‘Wild Bill’ Hickok, who was to shoot Davis Tutt over a pocket watch in two days’ time in 1865, in the town square of Springfield, Missouri - the kind of quick draw duel that’s the staple of so many Westerns, and was first published in Harper's Magazine in 1867, making Hickok a household name and folk hero.

Although they’d fought on opposite sides of the Civil War (Hickok, Union; Tutt, Confederacy) the two had later become friends, but had fallen out over romantic matters, and their rivalry had become poisonous and quite possibly a bit obsessive. On that particular afternoon, Hickok was paying cards with some other heavy hitters, while Tutt, although not playing himself, stood on the side-lines offering advice and haw-hawing and, when this failed to work, claimed Hickok owed him money after a previous game, and scooped his watch off the table as surety.

Over the following days, attempts at reconciliation foundered on disagreements between Hickok’s recollection of the sum and what Tutt would accept for the watch – since he seems to have been intent on humiliating Hickok it’s hard to sympathise and, after one final attempt failed, Hickok walked out into the square, waited for Tutt and, when he appeared, the men faced each other and, more or less simultaneously, drew their guns and fired. Tutt missed, Hickok didn’t. Tutt said ‘Boys, I’m killed’ and fell down, shot through the heart. When it came to trial (because even the Old West had law sometimes) Hickok claimed self-defence and, though some people did want to lynch him, rode away to become a law man himself one day. It says a lot about 1860s America that homicide could be excused with ‘Shouldn’t have worn another man’s watch’.

Follow us on Instagram

The prison annex, built in 1450 where the Clink Prison Museum now stands, served as a prison until 1745 (the year Bonnie...
18/06/2026

The prison annex, built in 1450 where the Clink Prison Museum now stands, served as a prison until 1745 (the year Bonnie Prince Charlie tried to take the throne), when the remaining prisoners were all moved to a house on Park Street (round the back of what is now Shakespeare’s Globe) and the building re-purposed – as workshops and warehousing in all likelihood – this state of affairs remained until 1814, when the whole street went up in smoke and, if there were imports of sugar, turpentine or tallow being stored, so less the wonder.

There’s then a gap of about 40 uncertain years before the whole area started to get re-developed, and the reason for this was the railways; consider the London railway stations – London Bridge opened in 1836 and Waterloo in 1848, but the additions of Charing Cross in 1864, and Cannon Street in 1866 meant the building of a huge network of brick viaducts to connect the stations together and to the main lines of their respective networks, complete with the Hungerford and Cannon Street viaducts to cross the river – without the huge bridge outside our museum, for instance, Cannon Street Station would be very quiet indeed!

With all of that at least in prospect, it follows that there was very little meaningful planning done in this part of town for ten or more years before the railways were finished but, with that infrastructure in place, planners filled up the remaining space very quickly and neatly, like a diligent child with a colouring book – hence all that lovely cast iron superstructure for the Borough Market – all built new after the railway was put in, and that very fine market pub, The Globe, dated 1874. The warehouse that now houses our museum was built as part and parcel of that process to hold goods shipped up the Thames, but on the very site of the old Clink Prison.

Soldier, William Odell strangled his wife today in 1760. Elizabeth Odell’s son (also named William) last saw his mother...
17/06/2026

Soldier, William Odell strangled his wife today in 1760. Elizabeth Odell’s son (also named William) last saw his mother alone heading towards the Black Lion near Hanger Lane, Acton (now home to the famous gyratory system); she was going to show a lady her way home for a small fee. At 10pm, Elizabeth began her return journey, meanwhile the brutish and cruel William Odell (snr), who beat his wife ‘almost blind’, went in search of her, saying he would kill both women if he found them – Elizabeth never reached home.

A week later, when asked by Mary Middleton (‘a naughty lady til her husband married her’) Odell declared that ‘he knew she never would come back no more’, refusing to reveal her whereabouts, though claiming to know them – then Elizabeth’s body was found ‘barbarously murdered’ in a pond – first presumed to be a pile of weeds, then a dead sheep before it was recognised for what it was. She had been brutally beaten and then strangled with a thin string, and her arms were cut – with a knife according to the previously naughty Mary – ‘They were not, by God’ Odell retorted, ‘They were cut with a sword’ – so he wasn’t really able to mount a credible defence after that.

Not that his admission stopped him – by the time he hanged on the 15th of September, he was firmly in denial, and he asked the hangman to carry his dead body past Mary Middleton’s house and have her shake his dead hand so that she could fully understand the effect of her false testimony. The name ‘Hanger Lane’ derived from the Old English term for ‘wooded slope’ and not to hanging at all – so, while there be some mordant appeal in the idea of an eldritch gallows for William Odell in the middle of the famous eldritch gyratory system, there never really was one.

Today’s picture is by Gerry Embleton.

Follow us on Instagram

Because Henry VII defeated Richard III in battle, it’s widely accepted that the Wars of the Roses ended on Bosworth Fiel...
16/06/2026

Because Henry VII defeated Richard III in battle, it’s widely accepted that the Wars of the Roses ended on Bosworth Field in 1485, though this is something of a Victorian simplification; it makes nice tidy sense for the whole thing to conclude with the death of nasty Richard in a hand to hand duel with lovely Henry (must be lovely because he was Elizabeth I’s grandad) – but the remaining Yorkists put up a supposedly royal alternative to Henry in 1487, had a rebellion with the intention of making him king, and fought it out with Henry on this day at Stoke Field in Nottinghamshire. The leading Yorkists were much quieter after that, because most of them were dead.

The pretender (such as he was) was a young man named Lambert Simnel, and Henry’s treatment of him was refreshingly nuanced and deft (and not very medieval at all) – he gave him the unpleasant job of turning the spit in the kitchen, but did later let him rise to the position of falconer, showing that the king could not merely be merciful, he could be funny with it as well. While he abolished the right of noblemen to have armies of uniformed retainers, he also fined nobles that displeased him so that they couldn’t afford to pay private armies anyway.

He pretty much invented the Civil Service, which was a very clever way of being able to do horrible things to people without getting blamed for it – you can imagine the young Henry in the court of his uncle, Jasper Tudor, working it all out ‘I can tell the Treasury to put the taxes up, but it will be the quill-pushers that get the blame, not me…’ It got so you couldn’t attempt to assassinate the guy without filling in the right form first. Another of his developments was the Court of Star Chamber, which could have people tortured if it considered them a sufficient danger the realm – torture by civil servants was much more acceptable.

Follow us on Instagram

You will be aware, of course, that the Black Death of 1348 killed about half the working population of Europe, possibly ...
15/06/2026

You will be aware, of course, that the Black Death of 1348 killed about half the working population of Europe, possibly less aware that the remainder, particularly the rural peasantry, found their post-plague labour at a rather greater premium and started suggesting that they might receive a rather more generous remuneration. It may have passed you by completely that the royal response from King Edward III to this outrageous display of proto-Bolshevism was to make pay rises illegal - this made law in the Statute of Labourers of 1351.

Edward was not a king inclined to compromise, so his law was not seriously challenged until after his death; the new king was Edward’s grandson, Richard (his son, the Black Prince of Wales, had predeceased him); Richard II became king at the age of 10. Four years later, the peasants of Kent rose up under the leadership of a man named Wat Tyler and marched on London. Among other protests, they burned the Palace of Savoy (where the hotel now stands) home of the widely disliked John O’Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the king’s uncle. Today in 1381, King Richard, aged 14, met Wat Tyler at Smithfield, promised redress of the peasants’ grievances, Tyler accepted his word – but a fight broke out and Tyler was killed.

Richard II grew up into a vapid tyrant who was eventually deposed by the son of John of Gaunt, but The Clink (or, as it was then, the Bishop of Wi******er His Prison) also has a part in the story. In those days it was two prisons – one for men, one for women – located in the Bishop’s back yard, about where the red brick building on the corner of Wi******er Walk now stands and, inconveniently close to the rioters’ route; they attacked the prisons, let everyone out and so damaged the men’s one that, in an 80-year stop gap measure, men were subsequently held in the cellars of the Bishop’s Palace – until there was another riot, and for similar reasons.

Follow us on Instagram

Address

1 Clink Street
London
SE19DG

Opening Hours

Monday 10am - 7:30pm
Tuesday 10am - 6pm
Wednesday 10am - 6pm
Thursday 10am - 6pm
Friday 10am - 7:30pm
Saturday 10am - 7:30pm
Sunday 10am - 7:30pm

Telephone

+44 20 7403 0900

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when The Clink Prison Museum posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Museum

Send a message to The Clink Prison Museum:

Shortcuts

Share

Category