WAPPING WHARF: GAOL GATE

Client: Umberslade and Muse
Metalwork Fabricator: Newton Forge
Architect: Alec French Architects
Enabling Works: Churngold
Project Manager: Gardiner & Theobald

Created by artist Juliet Haysom, this pair of mirrored interventions relate the historic and contemporary approaches to surveillance within the site. The Gaol Gate Walk connects the formal, social and observational aspects of the original Bristol New Gaol plan with parallel elements of the contemporary housing scheme.

Wapping Wharf Gaol Gate. Photograph courtesy Juliet Haysom

The 1816 designs for the Bristol New Gaol formalised structures of power by facilitating centralised surveillance and control over every aspect of the prisoners’ lives. The building’s extraordinarily well-preserved drawings are in the collection of the Bristol Records Office, and they formed the basis of Juliet Haysom's research and designs.

Bristol New Gaol cell window detail from Seward's original 1816 designs. courtesy of Bristol Records Office (BRO CoP 1816 Gaol roll 3[No25])

Gaol design, courtesy of Bristol Records Office (BRO CoP 1816 Gaol roll 7[No1-a])

“My project therefore resurrects lost aspects of the site’s historic buildings, and aims to invite consideration of the role and act of viewing within public space.”

— Juliet Haysom

The Bristol New Gaol designs from 1816 and contemporary 'Secure By Design' guidelines share a common faith in the importance of the unseen onlooker, that is to say, in ‘passive surveillance’.

Haysom's proposal began by re-opening window apertures within the historic Gaol Gate, and subsequently introducing glazed steel-frame structures based on the gaol’s original designs of the cell walls and windows. The cell’s opaque elevation is thereby translated into a transparent and mirrored surface, which reflects the new public realm while simultaneously allowing views into the newly-conserved ruin. The project therefore resurrects lost aspects of the site’s historic buildings, and aims to invite consideration of the role and act of viewing within public space.

Find out more about this project via Juliet Haysom’s website: https://juliethaysom.net/wapping-wharf/

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