The Wesleyan Methodist School in St Mary's Street was the school I attended when we left Longridge to live in Preston around 1942. Across from the school was a small door set in very high brick wall that was almost a complete square. Inside was the Preston prison, complete with treadmill, for the prisoners to exercise on.
During World War II, on a siren warning of possible enemy action, all the pupils and staff from the school walked across the road, through the small door to the prison and into the air-raid shelters dug into the prison grounds. We never had to use them in the event of real enemy action but we did practice getting to them a few times.
As an older man, I used to shock some people by saying (with a serious look on my face), that I had to confess to a lie I had told when I joined the British Army and then the Royal New Zealand Air Force: that I had never been to prison ... then told them the above.
Dennis Crompton © 2013
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)
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