HM Prison Bristol
prison in Bristol, England
HMP Bristol (previously known as Horfield Prison) is a Category B men's local prison, located in the Horfield area of Bristol. The prison is operated by His Majesty's Prison Service.
Early history
Horfield Prison was built in 1883 to replace the New Gaol (built 1820). The Corporation had previously bought a pleasure garden in Horfield, and the field behind it with the intention of building a new prison there. When it was discovered that the Central Government intended to take over the building and maintaining of prisons, the city council left it to the State. The new prison was opened in February 1883.
At its foundation the prison had 160 cells, typically housing about 179 prisoners. Horfield Prison's history includes fourteen executions. The first of these took place on 11 March 1889: a man called Withy, hanged for murder. The last execution took place on 17 December 1963 when Russell Pascoe was hanged for the murder of William Rowe during a robbery.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “HM Prison Bristol” as prison in Bristol, England. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5635141. VIAF identifies the subject as 124597118. The Library of Congress control number is nb2008020876. Authority coordinates are 51.481, -2.592. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1883, 1820, 1889 and 1963.
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This entry incorporates text from “HM Prison Bristol” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.