Angel Place - Marshalsea and King's Bench Prison Sites (London)

 interesting place, invisible, historical layer / disappeared object

This is the site of several important prisons, over 500 years, from ca. 1300 - 1849. Most famously, this is the final location of the Marshalsea Prison, of Dickensian fame. First noted in the early 14th century, and originally located just north of here, the Marshalsea Prison opened here in 1811, housing Southwark's debtors, trespassers, smugglers, and court martialed Admiralty members, often with their families. Charles Dickens's father spent time here as a debtor, which had a major impact on Dickens's future writing career. He wrote "Little Dorrit" based on his own experiences as a child, with her father also a Marshalsea debtor prisoner.

Dickens wrote about this alley, then called Angel Court, in Little Dorrit:
"Whosoever goes into Marshalsea Place, turning out of Angel Court, leading to Bermondsey, will find his feet on the very paving-stones of the extinct Marshalsea Goal; will see its narrow yard to the right and to the left, very little altered if at all, except that the walls were lowered when the place got free; will look upon the rooms in which the debtors lived; will stand among the crowded ghosts of many miserable years."

The prison was closed in 1842, and demolished in 1849; all that remains today is the long brick wall along its southern boundary, with the original arched entry gates, on the south side of the alleyway.

This site was also where the King's Bench Prison was located for over 500 years, from ca. 1300 - 1758. The White Lion jail (marked as "Borough Goal" on cartographer Richard Horwood's 1799 detailed map), noted for its barbarity in the 17-18th centuries, was also located here.