Tony Cunnane's Early Years 1935-53

Early in 1946 Dad was sent on temporary duty to open up Leyhill Prison in Gloucestershire. Leyhill was widely publicised at the time as the very first 'open prison' in the country, which it was not. Dad was selected for this duty because of his several years experience of working in the open prison at New Hall Camp in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Actually Mum suspected that Dad had volunteered to go because temporary duty attracted extra pay. We had expected 'temporary duty' to mean only a few weeks but this detachment dragged on for two years.

Dad travelled from Wakefield to Leyhill in a prison lorry with seven trusted prisoners, one of whom was the lorry driver. It is not recorded whether the vehicle was the Grey Ghost! It has always seemed odd to me that the Prison Service could have contemplated sending just one officer on a long road journey with a group of prisoners, even if they were 'trusties'. When they arrived at what was to become Leyhill Prison Dad found it was actually nothing more than a collection of huts in the grounds of magnificent Tortworth Court, more or less midway between Gloucester and Bristol. It was late evening by the time they arrived and they had to settle themselves in with only the minimum of help from a small civilian advance working party. If I remember correctly Dad and the half dozen prisoners actually spent their first few nights in rooms inside Tortworth Court itself while the wooden huts were being prepared. Over the following months the number of prisoners and staff increased considerably. Dad's period at Leyhill turned out to be a very trying time for my Mother and sad for my sister Kathleen and me because we saw him only every four or five weeks.

In the summer of 1946 Mum, Kathleen and I spent a week on holiday visiting Dad. I have no diary for 1946 because I didn’t start writing them until 1947, but I can remember that we all stayed in a delightful farmhouse on the edge of the Village Green at Falfield, not far from Tortworth. There was no M5 motorway in those days of course; the A38 was the main road between Gloucester and Bristol. I remember it well because the road surface was a distinctive reddish colour and it was quite often completely devoid of any passing traffic for minutes on end. It was known locally as the 'arterial road', a new word for my vocabulary.

We had a delightful and very busy week. My mother, my sister and I had never been anywhere outside the grimy city centres of Leeds, Wakefield and Manchester. Everything we did and saw was a new experience. For the very first time I heard a cock crowing at dawn; I savoured the multitude of countryside smells, I marvelled at the animals on the nearby farms; we enjoyed farmhouse food that was quite out of our world, far superior to the wartime austerity food we had been used to for so long. For the first time ever my sister and I had fried ham and eggs for breakfast.

I was astonished at the sheer emptiness of the roads and byways – not only was there hardly any traffic, but there were very few people around. It was quiet enough to hear birds singing! We went on day visits to Wooten-under-Edge, Thornbury, Bristol and Gloucester by bus. One day we called in at Charfield railway station and asked the ticket office clerk to suggest an interesting day out. He was very helpful and we accepted his suggestion of a trip across the River Severn to Lydney by the local train which just happened to be standing on the platform, steamed up and ready to depart. We were the only four passengers that day and we had a splendid day out.

We walked many miles that week and the weather remained excellent. Several times we stopped off for refreshments in a roadside cafe on the A38 between Falfield and Stone called The Orange Umbrella. We didn’t stop there because we particularly needed refreshments but for the sheer novelty of buying food and drink and consuming it away from home. The Orange Umbrella had been open for only a few days so we were their first 'regular' customers. I have a vague memory that there was a large orange-coloured ornamental umbrella in the garden at the front but I might be wrong about that. We all thought it was a wonderful week and we were really sorry that we had to return to Wakefield – without Dad.

When Dad opened Leyhill Prison in 1946 the sign on the gate of Tortworth Court said HMP Falfield. I took this picture on the family Box Brownie on Ilford Selochrome back and white film. Falfield was another nearby village.

Tortworth Court is a Victorian mansion in South Gloucestershire built in Tudor style between 1848 and 1853 by Lord Ducie. Its architect was Samuel Sanders Teulon. The Grade II listed mansion had become derelict by the 1990s, and suffered a large fire in 1991, but was restored and extended at a reputed cost of £25 million and reopened in June 2001 as a high quality hotel.

The Wikipedia article about the present day Leyhill Prison, and a little of its earlier history, is here.

The image below, taken by Mum in 1946, shows Dad, my sister and me posing shyly outside Tortworth Church.