HER MAJESTY’S PRISONS
HISTORY
The building was erected in 1772 and used as a jail. The site had been used as an arsenal from 1758 to centralise munitions of war in St. John’s. In August 1769, a great fire raged through St. John’s for 12 hours and the original Arsenal was burnt down.
It was here that an American rebel named Christopher Vail was imprisoned in 1779, after his ship had been captured off the coast of Antigua. He noted that the building measured about 60 ft by 20 ft and was two stories high. The former inmates of this jail in the middle of town on Newgate Street (named after the famous London prison), could hold conversations with passersby, and thus “disseminate their evil councils among the idle and proliferate of both sexes, who were always lounging about at that spot”, (Antigua & the Antiguans p. 239). The building had been Antigua’s first jail, but in 1831 the prisoners were transferred to the old military barracks to the east of St. John’s, the jail’s present location.
To the east of the Arsenal was the old Guard-house, built in 1754. Adjoining this is a long stone building with grated windows. This became the charge room of the present police station, after the building became a police office about 1830.
RECENT YEARS
In the early 1930’s, the Arsenal was still being used for the storage of explosives within the court-yard of the present St. John’s Police Station. On the side facing the old Court House, now the Museum, the yard has a unique iron railing, composed of old bayonets fixed on musket barrels and were placed there after the Militia was abolished in July, 1838, (see box next page). Also in the 1930’s, old records of Antigua were kept in two of the vaulted stone rooms of the court-yard, which had been the prison cells looking out into Newgate Street. From about 1830, the compound had been Police Headquarters, but in 1978 it became the St. John’s Police Station when the new police headquarters was built on American Road.
THE BAYONET FENCE
Four years after emancipation, on the 1st July 1838, the Antigua Militia was disbanded. “A measure that saved the treasury of the island a considerable sum annually … an end was put to all military glory and deeds of arms among the planter Colonels of Antigua”. 
“Some of the collected muskets of the Militiamen were formed into a fence before the Arsenal, where they remain with their muskets pointing to the skies, as a remembrance of the warlike acts of the islands”
Those found on the fence are mostly second pattern muskets (c.1760-1780) with 42 inch barrels. At least two barrels bear regimental marks. The clearest has “2nd XV Regt”. Proof marks are also visible for example: “GR in the reign of Geo III. May bear Roman numerals which are arsenal assembly marks.
THE PRISON
In the 1730’s, it was deemed necessary to strengthen the garrison because of continuing threats of war and the increasing commercial importance of St. John’s. In 1735, barracks and accessory buildings were erected on high ground to the east of the town. Barracks had been built on Rat Island in 1741, but these proved unhealthy, due to a marsh nearby. So in 1753, a fund was raised to purchase land for building additional barracks to the east of St. John’s to accommodate the 38th Regiment of Foot stationed in Antigua.
By 30th May 1755, a new barracks for 700 men was being built near those of 1735. They were to cost £18,000 sterling. A military hospital was built to the east of the barracks, in the vicinity of the present Antigua Grammar School. Public gardens were planted by Colonel James Ross in 1756, and completed by the Antigua Legislature in 1758. The barracks were finished about 1759.
The Barracks consisted of two distinct buildings a few paces from each other. In 1831, the north wing of the lower one became disused and ruined, so it was resolved to repair it, and use it for as a jail in place of the one at the Arsenal. In 1840, the author of “Antigua and the A ntiguans” , mentions the barracks: “very delightfully situated in a kind of open heath to the east of the town”. So it remains today as the Prison, and the “open heath”, “‘Square” or “Parsah” (pasture) later became the Antigua Recreation Ground, where international cricket matches are now held.
