Strangeways – Friday Fictioneers, March 2016

Copyright Emmy L Gant

 

The prison has overshadowed these cramped and sooty terraced houses for years.

Sometimes, snug in my bed, I’d be woken by the wail of sirens, and I’d fancy I heard clanging cell doors, the relentless, pounding footsteps of the warders, the frustrated roars of the inmates.

I’d shiver, wondering if that dreadful man, with his strange ways, had finally escaped, and was now darting from doorway to doorway, intent on making his way home.

I hated living so close to the prison, but Mum said we were lucky.

“Some children have to travel miles to visit their fathers,” she said.

“Write what you see,” exhorts the multi-talented Rochelle Wisoff-Fields for Friday Fictioneers.  And in this atmospheric photo by Emmy L Gant,  I saw Strangeways Prison, past which I used to drive twice every day for a dozen or more years on my way into work in Manchester.  Such an oppressive building, with an atmosphere of gloom and foreboding which permeated the surrounding area.  The last execution took place there in August, 1964.