Former town lock-up, North Street, Great Dunmow
Introduction
The photograph on this page of Former town lock-up, North Street, Great Dunmow by Stefan Czapski as part of the Geograph project.
The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
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Former town lock-up, North Street, Great Dunmow
Image: © Stefan Czapski Taken: 25 Aug 2013
In days before the County Police Act of 1839 - which brought in local police stations - lock-ups served as places of short-term imprisonment, typically for holding drunks overnight. This one is certainly a very small building, but I have seen smaller - including one scarcely bigger than a pillar box in the Lincolnshire village of Digby: http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3628413 Humble as it is, this lock-up's little shuttered windows are Gothick in form - a feature which was fashionable from about 1780 until early Victorian times.
Images are licensed for reuse under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0
Image Location
Latitude
51.874272
Longitude
0.362478