On the morning on the 16th May 2023 five intrepid Snappers entered Shepton Mallet Prison.

For a brief moment it looked as if not all five would re-emerge!  See the photograph above.  This could not truly be described as an enjoyable experience but was certainly an interesting and sobering experience for the photographers. Mind you it was far more traumatic for the earlier inmates as the following quotation tells us;

“Many who went in healthy are in a few months changed to emaciated, dejected objects. Some are seen pining under diseases, expiring on the floors, in loathsome cells, of pestilential fevers, and the confluent Smallpox Victims, I will not say to cruelty, but I must say to the inattention of the Sherifs, and Gentlemen in the commission of peace. The cause of this distress is, that many prisons are scantily supplied, and some almost totally unprovided with the necessaries of life.”

— John Howard’s report to Parliament, 1773

Visits to the treadmill; execution cells; long drab corridors ensured that it was a very reflective Jonathon Bolgar; Roger Bonner; Tony Lavelle; Davina Hockin; and Martin Woodhead that retired to a nearby bright and cheerful cafe to revive their somewhat dampened spirits with mugs of hot coffee and hearty lunches.