Interview by Caz Streeter - 8th July 2006


Tony Taylor-Mason

Introduction

Tony Taylor-Mason is the keeper of Arundel Town Hall and kindly agreed to do an interview with me as part of my research into the history of the Arundel Jail and Town Hall. Tony is a mind of information and was an absolute pleasure to chat with. I would like to give a huge thank you to Tony, on behalf of CaSPIR, for his willingness to help me and kind generous welcome. The Arundel Town Hall is situated above the Jail.

Caz... Could you tell me how long you've been working at the Town Hall please Tony?

Tony... Since January, so I really am quite a new boy!

Caz... Oh right! What did you do before this?

Tony... Before this I was working for BMW as a fill in job after my wife and I left our pub. When this came along it was a unique opportunity!

Caz... Yes, what a fantastic building to work in! Can you tell me how old the Town Hall is?

Tony... The Town Hall is 170 years old; it was built in 1836 by the 12th Duke of Norfolk and was purpose built as a Town Hall for the people of Arundel. So it's not a lease building we actually own the building and it's still used as a working Town hall today.

Caz... Can you tell me anything about the history of the Town Hall and in particular the Jail?

Tony... The basement was used as a Jail from the first day it was opened and I did manage to find some minutes going back to 1890, when the council were requested to look at spending some money to make the cells more hospitable for people who were incarcerated. Basically after 60 years it needed a bit of a clean up and modernising. The police station was next door and the court was actually in the town. It's been used on and off since then as a Jail but it was actually used as the Arundel Museum from 1977 to 1986, and that's when the magistrate took it back over and started using it as cells again.

Caz... Do you know about any deaths that might have occurred in the Jail itself or in connection to the Jail?

Tony... Well despite a lot of work and a lot of phone calls and research there are no records to our knowledge left in existence (laughs) that can tell us anything about anybody who stayed in the cells or anything that happened in the cells. We checked with county hall and they have no records either except for the minutes I mentioned earlier. Arundel at one time had its own police force but, after the refurbishing of the Town Hall, Sussex police merged and a lot of records were destroyed, and although the Sussex Police headquarters has a museum, they seem to have nothing relating to our cells and Town Hall there.

Caz... Do you know if there were any specific punishments that went on in the cells?

Tony... If you look in the isolation cell, the chains you see on the wall are believed to be the original chains and people weren't just sat in there they were chained up, you can see it would be most unpleasant and uncomfortable with your arms stretched but if you were in isolation you were in punishment as well. Not a nice place to be! Obviously on the left hand side as you go in the Jail were windowless solid door cells, and your only contact was through a little hatch so if you were really bad that's where you were put. If you weren't so bad you went into the open grill door cells but still had no daylight.

Caz... Were both male and female prisoners held there?

Tony... I don't know to be honest there are no records to say that is wasn't a completely general cell so there may have been but there was a workhouse up the road which would have been used for under 18's.

Caz... On a personal note, do you believe in the existence of a spirit world or the paranormal?

Tony... Absolutely! I've seen too many things that I can't explain away. A pub I had with a lady called Bridget, had a little corner with an alcove fireplace where her parlour had been back in the old days, and it was always clean round there, you never had to clean. Even when we had an open fire and the soot wafted up you could white glove it and it was always spotless! If we ever moved anything we would get strange things happen like the door locking on us, until we put what we had moved back! Or we'd go out and leave the door open and we'd come back and it was locked shut! Things like that happened all the time. One time we went off to do something for our license in Horsham and when we came back our staff had been locked out of the bar, they tried the keys but couldn't open the door and we walked in later and we just opened it normally.

Caz... How strange? So on that note then have you ever experienced anything in the Town Hall?

Tony... It's not the most comfortable place to be on your own at night. There are lots of banging and clonking noises, scraping noises, normally around the staircase area where the door where they used to bring the prisoners up from the courthouse is. You try and explain it away as things shifting but everything in that corner is solid stone and doesn't shift, and there are shivery feelings (makes shuffling movement in his chair) and the hairs on the back of your neck stand up on end (laughs). It's uncomfortable, the noises are too regular, and you get a (Tony scrapes the table cloths three times with his nails) type of noise, like a stony sound and you can hear that crystal clear, and you know no one is in the Jail below.

Caz... Can you remember what the weather conditions are when these occurrences happen?

Tony... It can be any weather it doesn't make any difference, dry, thundering or even icy.

Caz... Is it just at night that you feel like that in here?

Tony... In the daytime there are too many people and too much going on, you have a lot of background noise and you wouldn't notice anything. It's not something I get worried about though, at the end of the day if it's paranormal they can't hurt you, just leave them alone and let them get on with it. This is what we used to do in the pub. All these things used to happen until we left everything alone, and accepted that something was there and we were there. We wouldn't do anything drastic, no modernisations or anything like that just left the place as it was, and after about 6-9 months things settled down again. We actually had a photograph on the wall which was taken just before the first world war of the garden, and when things were quiet in the pub a lady would appear in this photograph, but if strange things were happening in the pub the lady wasn't in it. I'm not kidding you. You can phone my wife and ask her about the picture in the pub and she'd tell you exactly the same thing. Baring in mind the pub used to be a mortuary as well years ago!

Caz... Wow, what a shame you don't still own it!

Tony... Yes you guys could have come and spent days there!

Caz... Has anyone else experienced anything unusual in the Town Hall?

Tony... Yes actually Brian who was the keeper quite a few years ago. He used to say that weird things went on but he's retired now and moved on. But it's not something we discuss in here, there is quite a few female staff here and they don't want to be reminded that they are working in here at night (laughs).

Caz... Can you remember when the last strange occurrence was in here?

Tony... That would be me, last night when I came to take the flag down at ten past nine. I brought the wife in, we could hear noises and she said "oh is Kevin downstairs" and I said "No there's nobody downstairs". It's not something that you only get now and then if you're in this building at night you are going to hear things any night of the week! It's not like it happens once a week or once a month, if you're are in this building at night you will hear things, and if you don't you're deaf (laughs)!

Caz... Is it all audio activity here or have you ever seen anything?

Tony... No I haven't seen anything. I wish I had! It would tell me one way or the other what is going on. As I say at the pub we had things moved around and a man was seen sitting near the window, and then you've got something definite. Here you just hear noises and it's quite disappointing really (laughs)!

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