Sponsored Lock-In at the Old Lock-Up Gnosall
As part of our biennial GFest, we host a variety of events, and this year have something new and exciting! This year, for the first time in over 80 years, someone is about to be LOCKED UP in Gnosall!
Published: 18 June 2026
Built almost two hundred years ago, the Old Lock-Up is a hidden gem in Gnosall village. Rather grand for a small prison, the lock-up was designed and built by local builder and architect, James Trubshaw, using local stone from ‘Hollies Quarry’ and was originally sited opposite the Gnosall Police station on the corner of Stafford Road and Station Road (A518).
Locked up in Gnosall
Councillors Bob Middleton, Mike Sullivan and Keith Parry after our health & safety inspection of the Old Lock-UP.
And this year, three intrepid Gnosall Parish Councillors have agreed to be ‘incarcerated’ overnight to experience what it would have been like being ‘locked-up’ in the late 1800’s.
Councillors Bob Middleton, Keith Parry and Mike Sullivan, dressed in period garb and with few modern conveniences, will be ‘thrown’ into the old Lock-Up on Sellman Street at 8pm on Thursday the 16th of July 2026.
There they will spend the night with straw bedding, some candles and a bucket, until their release at 7am on Friday morning.
In order to keep them lock-ed up overnight, we are asking residents to sponsor their incarceration.
Any amount large or small will be gratefully received, and all proceeds will go to community causes. Sponsorship forms can be found at the Parish Council or online at https://gnosallparishcouncil.gov.uk/lock-in-the-old-lock-up-2/.
They will be released for good behaviour, and (providing sufficient funds have been raised) will receive a lavish ‘Break Out’ Breakfast at the Grosvenor Centre, to which residents are invited. The Break Out Breakfast is just £5 and must be booked in advance and will give participants the opportunity to hear first-hand about our inmates experience.
The Old Lock-Up is a hidden gem that nestles under the trees on the corner of Sellman Street and the A518 and was opened to the public for the first time in many years, in 2025 for the Heritage open Day Festival. It will open again this year on September 12th from 10am to 12,30pm, as part of the Heritage Festival, and visitors and residents will be able to peek inside this fabulous little building.
Members from Gnosall Heritage Group and the Gnosall Jambusters WI will be at the lock-in to share some of the history of this little building and how it came to sit where it does today.
A potted history of the Old Lock-Up
In 1829, two thousand labourers were employed to work on the construction of the Aris’s Birmingham to Liverpool canal and were living in the Gnosall. This seemed to coincide with a spate of sheep and poultry thefts and an increase in ‘acts of midnight depredation to proceedings of a tumultuous and riotous description in the open day’ or in today’s language inappropriate drunken behaviour. The situation alarmed the community to such an extent that the residents applied for the appointment of a large body of special constables and desired a small military force be stationed in the parish.
The Old Lock-Up in its original location
At the same time in the South of England, a series of agrarian riots broke out, spreading across to East Anglia. Dubbed the ‘Swing Riots,’ the rioters were agricultural workers protesting low wages and terrible working conditions, but although Gnosall experienced an increase in poaching and theft, the riots never extended as far as Staffordshire. The threat of these riots reaching Gnosall, together with the incidents with the canal workers was enough to inspire the authorities to build a lock-up in Gnosall and a ‘building for the confinement of criminals was authorised at the meeting of the parish Select Vestry on the 10th of June 1830.
The Gnosall policeman used the lock-up for keeping transgressors, navvies, publicans and even a murderer, before they were sent to Stafford gaol to face trial.
Its use continued through the early 1900’s, and was even used to confine a German prisoner of war during WWII until it fell out of use as a prison and was used to house poultry in the 1950’s. In 1964 the County Council wished to widen Stafford Road and planned to relocate the lock-up to the County Museum at Shugborough, however the Gnosall Women’s Institute objected and set about re-siting the building.
A small parcel of land was gifted to the WI in 1969 for the express purpose of housing the lock-up, but before it could be relocated, it was partially demolished by a lorry. The WI were fundamental in retaining this wonderful piece of historic architecture in the village and went so far as to place a time capsule containing a 1/2p, 2p, 10p piece, the Home and Country magazine and a notes stating ““This Lock Up was built in the 18th Century and was moved to its present site in 1971. These coins were placed by the Women’s Institute to commemorate its Golden Jubilee at the relaying of the first stone.”
The Parish Council further improved the building, drainage around the building, improved the door and security in 2011 and continue to maintain the building to this day.
This Lock-up is one of just three surviving in the county, with the other two in Stafford and the village of Alton.
Date: Thursday 16th July 2026
Time: 8pm Lock -in, release 7am Friday 17th July
Venue: Old Lock-Up Sellman Street.
For more details take a look at our event Sponsored lock-In @ the Old Lock-Up – Gnosall Parish Council