HM Prison Garth
prison in Lancashire
HM Prison Garth is a Category B men's prison, located in the village of Ulnes Walton (near Leyland), in Lancashire, England. Garth is operated by His Majesty's Prison Service, and is situated next to HMP Wymott.
History
Garth Prison was opened in October 1988, and a new residential unit (housing 120 prisoners) opened on 2 July 1997.
In 1998, inmates put out a contract on a police dog called Scooby because of its track record in locating illegal drugs at the jail, requiring home security measures and, once, armed police.
In January 2004, one of Garth's prison chaplains resigned over allegations that she had an affair with a prisoner who worked as a cleaner in the prison chapel. In September 2006 a prison officer from Garth was jailed after it emerged that she had smuggled pills and a mobile phone to an inmate she was having an affair with at the prison.
In August 2007, a report by Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons praised Garth stating that it was "an essentially safe, respectful prison, with an increased focus on resettlement." However the report also criticised the prison for its race relations and overcrowded accommodation. The prison has since then experienced severe decline.
Further accommodation of 180 places was built at Garth Prison in late 2007 and is notable for being the first prison building to incorporate Interseasonal Heat Transfer.
A fire killed a prisoner on the 24th of September 2025 due to the fire alarm in his cell failing to active after a fire began in his cell.
“HM Prison Garth” enters the record as prison in Lancashire. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Prison, Garth and prison can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5635183. VIAF identifies the subject as 170568344. The Library of Congress control number is nb2011011867. Authority coordinates are 53.680, -2.758. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1988, 1997, 1998 and 2004.
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This entry incorporates text from “HM Prison Garth” 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.