HM Prison Dartmoor is a Category C men's prison, located in Princetown, high on Dartmoor in the English county of Devon.

Main gates of Dartmoor Prison

In 2002 the Prison Reform Trust warned that Dartmoor Prison may be breaching the Human Rights Act 1998 due to severe overcrowding at the jail.

The Dartmoor Prison Museum, located in the old dairy buildings, focuses on the history of HMP Dartmoor.

* Decline and Fall, a novel by Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1928 makes thinly disguised references to Dartmoor Prison.

* Dartmoor Prison is mentioned in The Thirteen Problems, a short story collection written by Agatha Christie, and first published in 1932.

* Dressed to Kill, A 1946 Sherlock Holmes film uses Dartmoor Prison in the plot as the supposed location where three music boxes were made that contain a secret code for a criminal gang.

A cardboard replica is left in its place, which is left standing after the original Dartmoor Prison sinks with all hands at the end of the episode.

* Comedy Band The Barron Knights ' 1978 UK # 3 hit single A Taste Of Aggro, a medley of parodies, included a version of The Smurf Song featuring, in place of the Smurfs, a group of bank robbers from Catford who have escaped from Dartmoor Prison.

* Dartmoor Prison Museum

Princetown is best known as the site of Dartmoor Prison.

Photograph of prisoners at the Dartmoor ( HM Prison ) | Dartmoor Prison tied together carrying a cart out the gates, circa 1900.

Dartmoor Prison was built in 1806 at a cost of £ 130, 000 and at one time had a capacity between 7, 000 and 9, 000 prisoners.

* May 24 – Dartmoor Prison opens in England to house French prisoners of war.

Peter, a sailor, had been briefly imprisoned by the British at Dartmoor Prison during the Napoleonic Wars ; he broke jail, made his way back to the sea, and later left his ship in New Orleans, where he used his savings to buy then-inexpensive land northwest of Lake Pontchartrain.

In the " Tales of Old Dartmoor " episode ( recorded in 1956 ) of The Goon Show radio comedy series, Grytpype-Thynne arranges for Dartmoor Prison to put to sea to visit the Château d ' If as part of a plan to find the treasure of the Count of Monte Cristo hidden there.

On 12 December 1966 the Krays helped Frank Mitchell, " The Mad Axeman ", to escape from Dartmoor Prison ( Frank Mitchell should not be confused with the contemporaneous Frankie Fraser, " Mad Frankie Fraser ", who allied with the Kray's rivals, the Richardson gang ).

According to William Burt, in his notes to Dartmoor, a Descriptive Poem by N. T. Carrington ( 1826 ), the original tomb consisted of a pedestal of three steps, the lowest of which was built of four stones each six feet long and twelve inches square.

Tristram Risdon, writing in about 1630, said that Childe's Tomb was one of three remarkable things in the Forest of Dartmoor ( the others being Crockern Tor and Wistman's Wood ).

In the early 19th century there was much interest in enclosing and " improving " the open moorland on Dartmoor, encouraged by Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt's early successes at Tor Royal near Princetown.

Tanner was the honourable secretary of the Dartmoor Preservation Association, and this reconstruction was one of the first acts of that organisation.

A year later Dartmoor was converted to a Category C prison for less violent offenders.

The Dartmoor Preservation Association, or DPA, was founded in 1883.

He was the author of many novels, plays and poems about Dartmoor.

He was for many years the President of the Dartmoor Preservation Association and cared passionately about the conservation of Dartmoor.

The last active mine in the Dartmoor area was Great Rock Mine, which shut down in 1969.

The subject of warrening on Dartmoor was addressed in Eden Phillpotts ' story The River.

The first letterbox meet was held on Dartmoor, and they are now held twice yearly on " clock change days " ( in March and October ).

Sylvia Olive Pleadwell Sayer, Lady Sayer ( 1904 – 2000 ) was one of the foremost early conservators of what is now Dartmoor National Park, in Devon in the south-west of England.

Despite Lady Sayer's establishment background, she was a fearless and impassionedfighter in the defence of Dartmoor: frequently she deliberately interrupted army live-firing exercises on Dartmoor's military ranges, and in 1985 snubbed The Prince of Wales over the Duchy of Cornwall's management plan for Dartmoor, since this allowed for a continuance of military usage.

For example the Dartmoor granite was emplaced around 280 million years ago and as it cooled it contracted leaving a multitude of mainly vertical cracks ; these facilitated hydrothermal circulation which both chemically altered the rock surrounding the cracks and deposited minerals in them.

William Crossing ( 1847 – 1928 ) was a writer and documenter of Dartmoor and Dartmoor life.

From his earliest youth he was fond of Dartmoor, his early associations centring around the neighbourhood of Sheepstor, Walkhampton, Meavy, and Yannadon.

He was one of the earliest members of the Dartmoor Preservation Association, joining it immediately on its formation.

It was placed at Cranmere Pool on northern Dartmoor by a local guide in 1854.

The railway reopened to regular passenger services in 1997 with the creation of Dartmoor Railway.

At Coleford Junction there is a branch to Okehampton, which has recently reopened to passenger trains as the Dartmoor Railway.

After temporary closure during a change in railway ownership in 2008, the cafe was reopened by the Friends of Dartmoor Railway.

The pair were transferred to Dartmoor Prison on 21 October 1851, but shortly afterwards Johns was transferred to the Woolwich prison hulk Justitia, probably for disciplinary reasons.

Many military units and civilian groups provide support for Ten-Tors and the Jubilee Challenge including the Royal Wessex Yeomanry, Exeter UOTC, 243 Field Hospital RAMC, 6th Battalion The Rifles, two Sea King HC4 helicopters from 848 Naval Air Squadron, 39 ( Skinners ) Signal Regiment, two Gazelle helicopters from 7 Regiment Army Air Corps ( Volunteers ), Bristol UOTC and the Dartmoor Rescue Group.

In 2001 a Board of Visitors report condemned sanitation at Dartmoor as well as highlighting a list of urgent repairs needed at the prison.

Dartmoor still has a misplaced reputation for being a high-security prison that is escape-proof.

Now a Category C prison, Dartmoor houses mainly non-violent offenders and white-collar criminals.

The ' Dartmoor Jailbreak ' is a yearly charity event, where members of the public ( not prisoners ) ' escape ' from the prison and must travel as far as possible in 4 days, whilst in convict clothing and without directly paying for transport.

* In the Tales of Old Dartmoor episode ( recorded in 1956 ) of The Goons radio comedy series, Grytpype-Thynne arranges for the prison to put to sea to visit the Château d ' If in France as part of a plan to find the treasure of the Count of Monte Cristo hid there.

* Dartmoor prison is implicated in the local Dartmoor ' Hairy hands ' ghost story / legend.

* Dartmoor prison plays a central role in The Lively Lady, American author Kenneth Roberts ' 1931 historical novel taking place during The War of 1812

* In the first episode of the second series of James May's Man Lab, James May and Oz Clarke were demonstrating map-reading skills by pretending to escape from Dartmoor prison and cross Dartmoor to their escape car ( although they had to start their escape from outside the prison grounds as they were not allowed permission inside the prison ).

The story concerns an English woman who lives at Fox Tor farm, and an American captured during the American Revolutionary War and held at the prison at Princetown on Dartmoor.

He also proposed that a prison be built on Dartmoor to house the thousands of captives of the Napoleonic Wars and the later War of 1812, who had become too numerous to lodge in the prisons and prison-ships at Plymouth.

With the closing of the prison in 1816, the town almost collapsed, but the completion of the Dartmoor Railway in 1823 brought back many people to the granite quarries.

Dartmoor and other prisons had been built for them ; the prison most famous for straw marquetry was Norman Cross, Huntingdon.

It is also played in the neighboring county of Devon, where one theory is that it was introduced by French or American prisoners of war imprisoned in Dartmoor prison during the early 19th century.

The history from the 13th century centres round the castle, which is first mentioned in 1216, when it was granted to William Briwere, and was shortly afterwards fixed as the prison of the stannaries and the meeting-place of the Forest Courts of Dartmoor.