The Cavendish Collection

Stone bars may not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage, but certainly they give it their best shot at the nineteenth-century gaol in Beaumaris (locally pronounced Bew-marris) on the Isle ot Anglesey. The little-yachting and tourist town beside the Menai Strait commands one of the finest views in Britain, across the water to the mighty peaks of Snowdonia, rearing up in their majesty. Nothing of this noble prospect, or of the outside world at all. can be seen from inside the gaol, whose great, blank, windowless walls rise in narrow streets. They look strong enough to keep an army out, or in. but despite its massive bulk die gaol seldom housed more than a do/en inmates. On one occasion, in 1873, a white flag was hoisted above the battlements, as if in surrender, to indicate that not one-single solitary prisoner was confined inside.