The lock-up (or roundhouse) in

Smisby Smisby is an ancient manor, civil parish and small village in South Derbyshire, England. It is from Melbourne and near the Leicestershire border

, Derbyshire, England, is a village lock-up dating from the late 18th century. Such lock-ups were fairly common in England at that time and were used to hold

miscreants A wrong (from Old English – 'crooked') is an act that is illegal or immoral. Legal wrongs are usually quite clearly defined in the law of a State (polity), state and/or jurisdiction. They can be divided into civil wrongs and crimes (or ''crimi ...

, often drunkards, or other low-level offenders awaiting transportation to the local

assizes The courts of assize, or assizes (), were periodic courts held around England and Wales until 1972, when together with the quarter sessions they were abolished by the Courts Act 1971 and replaced by a single permanent Crown Court. The assizes e ...

, for short periods of time. The Smisby lock-up is built of brick and is a Grade II* listed building.

History

Village lock-ups date from the

mediaeval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...

period. They were commonly constructed in rural areas, some distance from local courts, prisons or police stations, where there was a need for a structure for the temporary confinement of wrongdoers. They were frequently used to house drunkards, often overnight, in order to allow them time to sober up. It is estimated that around 200 lock-ups survive in England. The Smisby lock-up dates from around 1790. It was built in response to an order from the Derbyshire Court of quarter sessions, dated January 1790, which required that, "all parishes in the county where there is not already a Round House, House of Correction, or Gaol, shall provide a place of temporary confinement for the reception of

vagrant Vagrancy is the condition of homelessness without regular employment or income. Vagrants (also known as bums, vagabonds, rogues, tramps or drifters) usually live in poverty and support themselves by begging, scavenging, petty theft, temporar ...

s, paupers, felons and the like." The lock-up at Smisby, known locally as “The Jug”, is considered the best exemplar of the type now surviving in Derbyshire.

Architecture and description

Historic England dates the Smisby lock-up to the late 18th century. It is built of red brick with sandstone dressings. Clare Hartwell, in her 2016 revised volume, ''Derbyshire'', of the Pevsner Buildings of England series, notes the

pyramidal roof A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope (although a tented roof by definition is a hipped roof with steeply pitched slopes rising to a peak). Thus, ...

, topped by a ball

finial A finial (from '' la, finis'', end) or hip-knob is an element marking the top or end of some object, often formed to be a decorative feature. In architecture, it is a small decorative device, employed to emphasize the Apex (geometry), apex of a d ...

. The lock-up is a Grade II* listed building.

Notes

References

Sources

* {{Cite book , last1=Hartwell, first1=Clare , last2=Pevsner, first2=Nikolaus , author2-link=Nikolaus Pevsner , last3=Williamson, first3=Elizabeth , series= The Buildings of England , title=Derbyshire , url=https://www.worldcat.org/title/926820813 , year=2016 , publisher= Yale University Press , location=New Haven, US and London , isbn=978-0-300-21559-5

External links