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Princetown Pages by Geoff_Wright
| Page Views: 904 Last Visit to Princetown: November, 2002 | Princetown by Geoff_Wright - last update: Nov 7, 2002 |
Princetown and the Prison Princetown differs from other visitor centres in being right on the Moor. Little more than a village, it has come to its own as "the highest town in England", and has won repute for the rare and health-giving qualities of its air, which isn't surprising as the place is 1,400 feet above sea-level. |
|  | Princetown, so called in honour of the Prince Of Wales, afterwards George IV., because it and the whole of Dartmoor form part of the estates of the Duchy of Cornwall, owes its origin to the persistent efforts of an eithteenth-century worthy who imnagined that a fortune was to be won by the exploitation of Dartmoor. Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt was secretary to the Council of the Prince Of Wales, and Member of Parliament successively for Okehampton (to the North) and Plymouth (to the South). It was at his suggestion that the locality was selected in 1806 as the site of a prison for the large numers of Frencmen captured in the Napoleonic Wars. Later it was used for American prisoners taken during the war of 1812-14. |
| Not much to see on the outside! |
| | The high boundary wall of the present prison encloses an area of nearly 30 acres and surrounds the buildings in which prisoners of war were lodged, the inscription over the gateway, Parcere subjectis ("spare the vanquished"), being more appropriate to the prison's original purpose than to its later use. By the time the prison was built and occupied, Princetown had grown into a hamlet of considerable size. When a few years later peace was proclaimed, the place fell into decay. Princetown remained a deserted village until 1850, when the old war prison was used for the incarceration of convicts. and it has remained for this use ever since! |
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| Pros: | "You have to go there, just to say you visited!" | | Cons: | "Lots of Con's - but they are all locked away, haha" | | In A Nutshell: | "Not much to see - except the glourious scenery!" |
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 Comments for Geoff_Wright about Princetown | | | | |
bugalugs Sun Aug 13, 2006 18:10 UTC
When we went here you hardly hardly see out of the windscreen because of the rain. We did however visit the prison's museum | daarth Tue Jan 7, 2003 10:10 UTC
Nice reading about these small English places :-) | Geoff_Wright Fri Nov 8, 2002 19:56 UTC
Like something out of a movie, Phil. Glad I don't live anywhere near the prison. They inmates were shouting and calling to one another. I bet there's still some Americans in there from the Napoleonic Wars, haha. | phildeni Fri Nov 8, 2002 19:50 UTC
A return to one of your old haunts? How long were you in the "joint"? |
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