# HM Prison Bullwood Hall - Essex – Nov 2016



## mockney reject (Feb 4, 2017)

_The history_

HM Prison Bullwood Hall is a former Category C woman’s prison and Young Offenders Institution, located in Hockley, Essex, England. The prison was operated by Her Majesty's Prison Service. Bullwood Hall was built in the 1960s originally as a female borstal. Over time the prison also began to hold female adult prisoners.

In 2002 Bullwood Hall was featured in a series of six 30 minute documentaries titled "The Real Bad Girls". Although the series portrayed the prison in a positive light, a 2005 report condemned Bullwood Hall for still using the practice of slopping out. A year later the prison was singled out for its high levels of attempted suicides and self-harm amongst inmates.

Bullwood Hall continued to serve as a women's prison until 2006, when it was announced that it was to be converted into a Category C male prison, due to a shortage of male prison places.
On 10 January 2013 it was announced by the government that Bullwood Hall was one of 7 British prisons to be closed. The prison closed on Thursday the 28th of March 2013.

In November 2015 outline planning proposals were submitted to redevelop the site for residential use, including 60 homes.

More recently the prison became home for a group of squatters who vandalised it and took up residence until they were moved on and security was increased……

_The Explore_

Every now and then a place gets under your skin.

Bullwood hall for me is one of them.

I first visited Bullwood back in 2013, not long after it closed and failed at entry.

After traipsing over the fields at the back and then walking around the site I got told to leave by what must have been the most comical security guard ever. Dressed like some gangbanger from South Central LA he told us to “watch them snake’s bro” as we had been in the woods, then daring us to step over a magical line or he would call the police, we made our way off defeated.

It didn’t stop there though, I visited the site every few months, hoping security would sod off.

I got to know the site fairly well and on one visit found that a hole had been cut in the fence, problem being this hole was about 12 feet off the ground about the security fencing and way out of my reach.

So we carried on visiting and checking, googling for any news on the place. 

We visited one Sunday and decided to have a look at the actual Bullwood Hall house and ended up getting in there

The report for that can be found here

http://www.derelictplaces.co.uk/main/residential-sites/31975-bullwood-hall-hockley-sept-2015-a.html

But this still wasn’t enough

A few months back we visited it again, with our focus on the hole in the fence, so laden with some rope gear we actually made our way in, finally this was in we were in.

Yup we made it in

For a whole ten minutes 

Three squad cars, six coppers and three dogs later we had been read the riot act and were on our way home, again defeated

It appears that we had set off a dozen hidden PIR’s and a couple of remote cameras.

One thing that came out of all this is that the police offered to have us along on a training day so the 
dogs could chase us around the prison.

I’ll add at this point we were getting desperate to see the inside and thought it a fair trade to get chased for a few hours in return for taking some pics.

But it never happened

Then sat nosing around on Facebook one night, a friend of a friend etc. posted up a “ghost hunters” picture of the inside of Bullwood, for fuck sake!!!!

Anyways it turned out that the “ghost hunter” and his chums had smashed the prison open and were looking for “spooks” 

Well within days a gang of squatters had moved in and were living there.

They had been given 7 days to get out. 

This was it, our chance, but no one could make it and I couldn’t get out.

For fuck sake…..

So the following weekend I tried again

Well the squatters had gone and the security was over the top!

A dozen security guys and a dozen dogs, the dogs having free roam of the site. 

Looks like the new owners of Bullwood were taking no shit.

So it got forgotten about for a few weeks, we happened to check on it and the security was gone.

So the next night we hit it, we knew we would have one chance but had worked out another way in. 

Come 8:00 the next night we assembled outside Bullwood and spent the next hour getting in.

Well you know that hot girl you’ve chased who ends up not giving blow jobs, well that’s kinda Bullwood for me.

Don’t get me wrong it was great to finally get in there and have a look around but its gutted.

Everything interesting has gone and the power is off in most parts. 

No beds, nothing.

We started at the top and worked our way down, the upper attic was dull as fuck but the lower floors were better.

Once we had explored the main prison we ventured outside and to our surprise we found an old swimming pool that had been covered up with wood.

As prisons go it’s no Blundeston, in fact I’d go as far to say 15-H was better even though it was trashed.

None of our pics came out great as the light in there was abysmal. But here’s my pics have a butchers and see what you guys think


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## krela (Feb 4, 2017)

Great story, it's a shame it was a bit of an anti-climax for you though.


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