Bizarre But True! Britain’s got a peculiar hospitality trend happening. Former prisons are being converted into luxury hotels! Not themed experiences with fake bars painted on walls. Actual jails where real executions happened, where children did hard labour and where thousands died behind stone walls that developers literally cannot demolish…
Here’s the UK hotels where you can sleep in a former prison cell, if you’re brave enough, tonight…
1. Bodmin Jail Hotel, Cornwall
Bodmin Jail was constructed in 1779 by the very people it would imprison…
Napoleonic prisoners of war quarried 20,000 tonnes of granite from Bodmin Moor and built their own cage. The irony is documented in prison records. They hauled stone, mixed mortar and erected walls that would later hold British criminals for over a century.
The jail pioneered individual cell containment in Britain. Before Bodmin, prisoners were packed into communal rooms. This was the first facility to isolate inmates in separate cells, a revolutionary concept that spread across the prison system.
Today, those cells are hotel rooms.
Three original cells get knocked together to create one bedroom. The granite walls remain. The thickness that made demolition impossible now provides soundproofing for guests!
Public hangings at the prison weren’t quiet affairs though. When the Lightfoot brothers were executed at Bodmin in 1840, over 25,000 spectators showed up. A train carrying 1,100 passengers stopped specifically so riders could watch. Four years later, 20,000 people came to see Matthew Weeks hang.
These weren’t criminals guilty of murder alone. Elizabeth Osborne was hanged in 1813 for setting fire to her former employer’s corn. Sarah Polgrean was executed in 1820 for poisoning her husband. The jail conducted 55 executions in total, including eight women, for crimes ranging from murder to theft.
The execution pit at Bodmin (now part of a visitor attraction experience within the same building as the hotel) is the only working Victorian structure of its kind remaining in the UK. It was rediscovered during renovation works in 2005 and fully restored. You can tour it between breakfast and checkout!
After a £65 million investment, Bodmin Jail Hotel opened in 2021 as a four-star property. The building’s resistance to destruction became a selling point…
2. Malmaison Oxford, Oxfordshire
Seven Years Old, Seven Days Hard Labour. Oxford Castle Prison held a child named Julie-Ann Crumpling.
She was seven years old.
Her crime? Allegedly stealing a pram. Her sentence? Seven days of hard labour in Oxford Prison.
Hard labour wasn’t symbolic. Children broke rocks, picked oakum until their fingers bled and worked the treadmill alongside adult prisoners. The Victorian justice system didn’t differentiate based on age when it came to punishment.
Oxford Castle operated as Her Majesty’s Prison Oxford from 1888 to 1996. By closure, it was packing three prisoners into cells designed for one. Overcrowding and outdated facilities forced the shutdown.
The Malmaison hotel chain converted it into luxury hotel accommodation instead…
The original cell doors remain. Iron staircases still connect floors. You sleep in renovated cells with modern amenities, but the bones of the building clearly tell the story…
3. The Courthouse Hotel, London
Infamous as the place where The Krays Stood Trial. The Courthouse Hotel Shoreditch occupies what was the Old Street Magistrates Court and Police Station…
Built in 1905, this Grade II listed Baroque building sentenced criminals until the late 1990s. The Kray twins stood trial here for “demanding money through menaces” before their eventual life imprisonment in 1969. Mick Jagger was accused of cannabis possession in these courtrooms. Keith Richards received a £205 fine for illegal substances within these walls.
The holding cells are still there.
Five original prison cells have been converted into private drinking booths in the Jailhouse Bar. The walls feature graffiti-style murals. You can order cocktails where criminals once waited to face the magistrate.
The hotel opened in 2016 after the building spent time as a filming location for productions including “Spooks” and “Luther”.
Today it houses 86 rooms and 42 suites. The Judge & Jury restaurant operates in the original wood-panelled courtroom. Diners eat refined British comfort food where defendants once stood.
The basement includes a 10-metre heated indoor pool, sauna, steam room and spa treatments. There’s a 196-seat cinema and a two-lane bowling alley available for private hire too!
The rooftop terrace offers panoramic views over the London skyline and the juvenile court on the first floor now functions as a private members’ bar.
The building retains its imposing Baroque architecture whilst housing five-star luxury amenities. The contrast creates the appeal – historical severity wrapped in contemporary indulgence!
4. Good Hotel London, Royal Victoria Dock
The Good Hotel London floats in Royal Victoria Dock. It’s a hotel. It’s a barge. And it used to be a Dutch detention centre for illegal immigrants…
Built in 2007 in the Netherlands, the structure housed people awaiting deportation. In 2016, the entire 8-million-kilogramme barge was loaded onto a submersible cargo vessel, towed across the North Sea, and sailed up the Thames to its current mooring.
The 148-room floating hotel converted cells into compact bedrooms. At 13 square metres, the standard rooms maintain their prison-cell dimensions. Corner rooms knock two cells together for a decadent 30 square metres of space…!
Dutch design fills the interior—custom-built shelving, swing-arm wall lights, hidden phone chargers in windowsills. No televisions in rooms. The absence is deliberate, pushing guests toward communal spaces.
The Living Room occupies the ground floor with open-plan seating, communal work tables, sustainable restaurant serving local ingredients. The Roof terrace bar sits above, offering views across the Thames, Canary Wharf visible in the distance, planes from London City Airport passing overhead every ten minutes.
At the time of writing, rooms cost £98 to £135 per night. Fixed pricing regardless of season or events. The hotel operates as a social enterprise, reinvesting profits into education programmes and hospitality training for long-term unemployed Newham residents.
The barge was scheduled to remain in London for five years before moving to another location. The entire operation – hotel, training programme, floating platform, designed to be temporary, mobile, replicable.
You sleep where deportees once slept. The structure hasn’t changed. Only that the guests are a little more ‘voluntary’ now…
(Cover Photo Credit: Malmaison Oxford)
