Abstract
Northern Ireland’s prisons frequently found themselves on the front lines of conflict during the thirty years of the Troubles. Now shorn of useful purpose and largely abandoned, these examples of carceral heritage pose a critical question on how Northern Ireland deals with the physical remnants of the recent past. The ‘legacy issues’ raised by aspects of the built environment are no less intractable or divisive than those of transitional justice and victimhood, and the very nature of architecture; both its symbolic potency and the sheer size of some of these places render these issues difficult to sweep aside. This chapter focuses on three such sites, namely HMP Maze (aka Long Kesh), HMP Armagh and HMP Belfast in order to plot the evolution of these strategies through time and, by exploring the relevant contexts, to explore why particular approaches were adopted and have changed with the flux of contemporary Northern Irish politics.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
This chapter does not use the more common term ‘post-conflict’ because, as is evident in the text, conflicts do not need to be violent to be observable, and contemporary Northern Ireland is far from a ‘post-conflict’ society as various groups continue to wage ‘the conflict by other means’ (Graham and Whelan, 480).
- 2.
The term ‘both’ here is perhaps unhelpful, given that it is a necessary oversimplification. The supposition that there are only two, monolithic narratives to the conflict; one Unionist and one Nationalist, is clearly untrue, and does not concede the complexity of the multiple dissonant narratives which exist in contemporary Northern Ireland.
- 3.
The parts of the site listed include a portion of the perimeter fence, a watchtower, the administration building, the multi-faith chapel, hangers from the former RAF Long Kesh, the hospital (where the ten hunger strikers died) and one of the H-Blocks (formerly used to hold Loyalist prisoners). The listing descriptions for the site can be viewed at the Department for Communities website (https://apps.communities-ni.gov.uk/Buildings/).
- 4.
One of the often cited factors regarding the appointment of the current developer, the Trevor Osborne Group, to the Armagh Gaol project was that developer’s previous successful regeneration of Oxford Castle and Gaol into a shopping district and boutique hotel. This scheme is of course also subject to analysis through the lens of dark tourism, but Oxford Gaol certainly lacks the recency and rawness that the history of Northern Ireland’s prisons continues to propagate.
Bibliography
Aguiar, Laura. 2015. Back to Those Walls: The Women’s Memory of the Maze and Long Kesh Prison in Northern Ireland. Memory Studies 8 (2): 227–241.
Anson, Caroline. 1999. Planning for Peace: The Role of Tourism in the Aftermath of Violence. Journal of Travel Research 38 (1): 57–61.
Armagh City and District Council with Hall Black Douglas and Alistair Coey Architects. 1999. Armagh Gaol: A New Future – A Planning Statement. Retrieved from the Archives: Armagh County Museum, Armagh.
Barsalou, Judy, and Victoria Baxter. 2007. The Urge to Remember: The Role of Memorials in Social Reconstruction and Transitional Justice. Washington, DC: United States Institute for Peace.
BBC. 2007. Maze ‘Will Not Be Terror Shrine’. BBC, July 25.
Campbell, Cormac. 2016. £500,000 Fund for Northern Ireland’s Historic Buildings. The Detail, September 15. http://www.thedetail.tv/articles/500-000-fund-for-northern-ireland-s-historic-buildings
Carr, Garrett. 2017. The Rule of the Land: Walking Ireland’s Border. London: Faber & Faber.
Cochrane, Feargal. 2015. The Paradox of Conflict Tourism: The Commodfication of War or Conflict Transformation in Practice? The Brown Journal of World Affairs 22 (1): 51–69.
Dawson, Graham. 2007. Making Peace with the Past: Memory, Trauma and the Irish Troubles. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Dowler, Lorraine. 1998. ‘And They Think I’m Just a Nice Old Lady’ Women and War in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Gender, Place & Culture 5 (2): 159–176.
Flynn, M. Kate. 2011. Decision-Making and Contested Heritage in Northern Ireland: The Former Maze Prison/Long Kesh. Irish Political Studies 26 (3): 383–401.
Foley, Malcolm, and John J. Lennon. 1996. Editorial: Heart of Darkness. International Journal of Heritage Studies 2 (1): 195–197.
Foote, Kenneth. 2003. Shadowed Ground: America’s Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy. Texas: University of Texas Press.
Foucault, Michel. 1984. Of Other Spaces. Architecture/Mouvement/Continuité, Oct. Trans. Jay Miskowiec.
Graham, Brian, and Sara McDowell. 2007. Meaning in the Maze: The Heritage of Long Kesh. Cultural Geographies 14 (3): 343–368.
Graham, Brian, and Yvonne Whelan. 2007. The Legacies of the Dead: Commemorating the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 25: 476–495.
Graham, Brian, Gregory Ashworth, and John Tunbridge. 2000. A Geography of Heritage. London: Arnold.
Harkin, Rita. 2015. Anything Goes. In Architecture and Armed Conflict, ed. JoAnne M. Mancini and Keith Bresnahan, 145–163. Oxon: Routledge.
Kindynis, Theo, and Bradley L. Garrett. 2015. Entering the Maze: Space, Time and Exclusion in an Abandoned Northern Ireland Prison. Crime, Media, Culture 11 (1): 5–20.
Longley, Edna. 2001. Northern Ireland: Commemoration, Elegy, Forgetting. In History and Memory in Modern Ireland, ed. Ian McBride, 223–253. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McAtackney, Laura. 2014. An Archaeology of the Troubles: The Dark Heritage of Long Kesh/Maze Prison. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 2017. The Heritage of Long Kesh/Maze Prison. In Transforming Maze/Long Kesh Conference, Belfast, March 15. Unpublished.
McCullough, Niall, and Valerie Mulvin. 1987. A Lost Tradition: The Nature of Architecture in Ireland. 2nd ed. Dublin: Gandon Editions.
McDowell, Sara. 2008. Selling Conflict Heritage Through Tourism in Peacetime Northern Ireland: Transforming Conflict or Exacerbating Difference? International Journal of Heritage Studies 14 (5): 405–421.
———. 2009. Negotiating Places of Pain in Post-conflict Northern Ireland: Debating the Future of the Maze Prison/Long Kesh. In Places of Pain and Shame: Dealing with ‘Difficult Heritage’, ed. W. Logan and K. Reeves, 215–230. Oxon: Routledge.
Northern Ireland, Department for Communities, Historic Environment Division. 2017. Historic Environment Fund: FRAMEWORK OF SUPPORT, Ed. 2. Accessed from: https://www.communities-ni.gov.uk/publications/historic-environment-fund-overview
Robinson, Peter. 2013. Maze Peace Centre: Peter Robinson’s Letter to DUP Members. Belfast Telegraph, August 15.
Sevcenko, Liz. 2010. Sites of Conscience: New Approaches to Conflicted Memory. Museum International 62 (1–2): 20–25.
Sternfeld, Nora. 2011. Memorial Sites as Contact Zones: Cultures of Memory in a Shared/Divided Present. Trans. Aileen Derieg. European Institute for Progressive Cultural Politics.
Tunbridge, John, and Gregory Ashworth. 1996. Dissonant Heritage: The Management of the Past as a Resource in Conflict. Chichester: Wiley.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hamill, C. (2020). Rehabilitating the Prison: The Evolution of Strategies for Dealing with Northern Ireland’s Carceral Heritages. In: McCann, F. (eds) The Carceral Network in Ireland. Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42184-7_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42184-7_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-42183-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-42184-7
eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)