Dorchester Shire Hall

Although there's only a handful of cells below the courtroom, these small, cold and very dark stone rooms have quite the story to tell. It is within the confines of these incredibly atmospheric rooms that the accused would have awaited trial. Locked away scared and uncertain, they could have been waiting for mere hours to face judgement or could be forced to wait several days to find out their fate.

These cells still echo with the fear of those life-or-death waits, which could have been the final hours of the accused's lives. If found guilty they risked being sentenced to death in the courtrooms above, if they were lucky they might have just been transported to Australia.

Despite its dark past and sinister atmosphere, surprisingly the building doesn't have any well-known resident spooks, or many ghost stories attached to it.

In 2010, paranormal investigators claim to have captured an image showing the ghostly figure of Judge Jeffreys in one of the corridors. Known as the "Hanging Judge," Jeffreys does have strong links to the town. A little further along High West Street you will find his old lodgings, however the current courthouse was built more than a hundred years after his death.

In the aftermath of the Monmouth Rebellion, Jeffreys held the Bloody Assizes in the town, however at this time the courts were based in the Oak Room at the nearby Antelope Hotel. Perhaps the infamous Bloody Judge did visit a former courthouse that stood on the site of the present day one.

During recent renovations in 2018, workmen reported that their tools were moving around and being found in obscure places. To test the possibility of a paranormal explanation, they placed several objects on a table in an old cell and marked their outlines with chalk. They locked up the building and left the experiment overnight, the next day they found their tools had indeed moved despite the building being completely empty.