The clink prison Museum is on the place where was situated the once infamous in England prison on clink street. Two steps from Museum wall, remains of an old Winchester Palace, and this is not surprising: after all, the prison was almost at the Palace.

Residence of the Archbishop of Winchester, built in the XII century, included many buildings of different purposes, including small prison. It was a cell with a barred window in the basement and was intended to be heretics. Subsequently, the prison has expanded greatly and became common criminals. Her name is Klink " happened I guess from the sound of the slamming metal doors or chains that were shackled prisoners. Gradually the word came to mean in the English language of any jail or prison cell.

The conditions in prison Klink were horrifying, prisoners were tortured, beaten, tortured, punished for misdemeanors and just. However rich the prisoners paid the jailers and those who are dissatisfied with the salary allowed for a bribe, all – private room, bed, linens, candles, light weight irons. For a fee you can remove the circuit and out into the street to beg or even to work. The poor also because of the lattices were begging from passers-by or sold their clothes to buy food from the captors. As such, the prison existed for hundreds of years, and only in 1776 it was burnt down during the rebellion of Lord Gordon.

The clink prison is no more, but in the Museum argue that the carefully restored to its appearance. The visitor descends to the basement and bypasses the darkened prison facilities – chambers, torture, punishment cells. Wax dolls depict prisoners, pulling his hands from behind gratings, awaiting torture or sitting in "the hole" – a hole with dirty water from the Thames, where only his head sticking out. (This "hole" was afraid of all prisoners, not many people came back from it alive.) There are instruments of torture. Sound recording of quiet moans. Explanatory notes dispassionately and in detail tell about something terrible: for example, about penalty imposed by Henry VIII, criminals boiled alive.

Although many tourists are having fun, being photographed in the role of executioners and victims, visiting the Museum in General – not the ordinary family walk. So parents with young children should think before you go to the Museum in clink street.