Holloway Prison was England’s main women’s prison, operating on a ten-acre site in Islington, north London, from 1852 until its closure in July 2016. It began as a mixed-sex Victorian jail, was redesignated as a female-only local prison in 1902, was demolished and rebuilt between 1970 and 1985, and held some of the most widely known women in British criminal history, including the last woman executed in Great Britain. The site is now being redeveloped into a housing scheme called Holloway Park, with a public park and a dedicated Women’s Building.
Victorian Origins and the Shift to Women Only
Holloway opened on 6 October 1852 as the City of London House of Correction, built to hold both male and female offenders.1Heritage Gateway. HMP Holloway It followed the radial layout common to Victorian prisons, with corridors fanning out from a central point so guards could watch several wings at once. Four cell blocks held adult men, with separate blocks for juveniles and women, and the whole complex sat behind two brick gatehouses.
In 1902 Holloway was redesignated as the first female-only local prison in England. The male inmates were moved elsewhere, and the prison became the primary institution for women in London and the surrounding region, a role it kept for well over a century.
The 1970s Rebuild
By the late 1960s the Victorian buildings were widely regarded as unfit for purpose. In 1970 Parliament debated the decision to demolish and rebuild on the same site, with critics arguing the government was choosing “administrative convenience” over finding a more suitable location.2UK Parliament. Holloway Prison (Rebuilding) Reconstruction stretched from 1970 to 1985. The replacement was conceived as a place of healing rather than punishment: accommodation was grouped around green courtyards, cells were arranged along corridors instead of traditional tiered wings, and the site included classrooms, a swimming pool, and a sports hall.
Those ambitions did not survive contact with rising prisoner numbers and tightening budgets. The rebuilt prison drew persistent criticism over the decades for overcrowding, aging infrastructure, and inadequate mental health provision.
Suffragettes, Force Feeding, and the Cat and Mouse Act
Holloway became a focal point in the fight for women’s suffrage in the early twentieth century. Emmeline Pankhurst was among the campaigners imprisoned there. A Holloway medal engraved with the date 8 October 1908 records the action that led to her sentence, after she and two other women were convicted of inciting a rush on the House of Commons and refused to pay the resulting fine.3UK Parliament. Holloway Medal Awarded to Emmeline Pankhurst
Many suffragettes went on hunger strike inside Holloway. Prison doctors responded with force feeding, an invasive process in which a tube was pushed down a woman’s throat and liquidised food poured in.4UK Parliament. Writings Related to Imprisonment and Force-Feeding by Emily Wilding Davison Public outrage led Parliament to pass the Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill-Health) Act 1913, which gave the Home Secretary power to release prisoners whose health was deteriorating and then re-arrest them once they recovered.5UK Parliament. Cat and Mouse Act, 1913 The cycle earned the nickname “the Cat and Mouse Act.” Individual women were put through it several times, never serving enough continuous time to complete a sentence but never truly free either.
Ruth Ellis and the Last Execution of a Woman in Britain
On 13 July 1955, twenty-eight-year-old Ruth Ellis was hanged at Holloway for the murder of her boyfriend David Blakely, becoming the last woman executed in Great Britain. The execution caused considerable disturbance inside the prison. A Parliamentary question later that year noted that prisoners and staff were deeply unsettled by the hammering sounds of the scaffold being erected within the walls.6UK Parliament. Mrs. Ruth Ellis (Execution) Albert Pierrepoint, the hangman, later recalled that Ellis said nothing during the short walk from her cell to the gallows.
Thousands of people had signed petitions protesting her sentence, and the case fed broader debates about the mandatory death penalty and the legal definition of provocation. A decade later, the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965 replaced the death sentence with mandatory life imprisonment. Ellis was originally buried within the prison grounds, but in the early 1970s her remains were exhumed and reburied at St Mary’s Church in Amersham, Buckinghamshire.
Later High-Profile Inmates
Holloway held a number of other widely known prisoners in the second half of the twentieth century. Myra Hindley served part of her mandatory life sentence there following her conviction for the Moors murders; with the death penalty abolished before she and Ian Brady came to trial, life imprisonment was the only available sentence.7Parliament of the United Kingdom. Regina v. Secretary of State for the Home Department, Ex Parte Hindley During her time at Holloway she was initially described as a model prisoner and granted special privileges by the governor. She was later transferred to Durham and spent years petitioning the Home Secretary for clarification of her sentence and possible release, a request that was ultimately refused.
Rose West was also held at Holloway while facing charges related to a series of murders in Gloucester. Both cases required specialised arrangements within the prison’s high-security wings.
The Mother and Baby Unit
Holloway ran a mother and baby unit that allowed imprisoned women to keep their infants with them during the earliest months of life. Because of the unit’s physical limitations and the lack of an outdoor play area, babies could only stay until they reached nine months old. The unit handled a high proportion of foreign national prisoners, many serving lengthy sentences for drug-related offences, and in those cases a long sentence was not automatically a bar to a place on the unit. The mother and baby unit closed in 2013, three years before the prison itself.
The 2016 Closure
The decision to close Holloway came out of the November 2015 Spending Review and Autumn Statement, when the government set out plans to modernise the national prison estate by selling aging facilities on valuable urban land. Even the 1970s buildings had become costly to maintain and were considered incompatible with modern rehabilitation standards. Under the plans, women on remand would move to HMP Bronzefield, and HMP Downview would reopen as a refurbished women’s prison for sentenced inmates.
Holloway closed in July 2016. The Chief Inspector of Prisons noted in the 2016–17 annual report that losing Holloway’s capacity made women’s prisons more crowded than before, a result critics considered difficult to reconcile with the modernisation rhetoric that had justified the closure.
What Is Replacing Holloway Prison
In early 2019, three years after closure, the housing association Peabody bought the ten-acre site in partnership with private developer London Square. The purchase price was approximately £82 million, supported by a £42 million loan from the Mayor of London’s Land Fund.8GOV.UK. Mayor Secures Over 600 Affordable Homes on Former Holloway Prison
The original planning approval called for 985 homes, with 415 at council-level social rents. In December 2025 Peabody submitted updated proposals expanding the scheme to 1,101 homes, of which 643 would be affordable, representing 58 percent of the total. Social rent homes rose from 415 to 468. The development is being delivered in three phases, with construction already underway on the first, and includes a 1.4-acre public park that opens up green space walled off from the neighbourhood for over 160 years.
A central feature of the redevelopment is the Women’s Building, intended as a lasting legacy for the tens of thousands of women who passed through the prison.9Peabody. The Women’s Building – Holloway Prison At a minimum it aims to replace the support services for vulnerable women that were previously available on site when the prison was operational. A feasibility study identified demand for wrap-around advice on housing, finance, employment, and immigration, alongside private counselling spaces, group meeting rooms, a crèche, and a café. The building is expected to open in early 2027.