Collingwood Stockade

Full description

Opened in February 1853, the main building was 60 by 25 feet (18.29 by 7.62 metres), and served as dining, chapel and school room. Other wards were added later and in 1857 ten stone solitary cells were built. There was a high palisade surrounding the stockade building but, except fot the blue-stone cells with enclosed yards, security was minimal. Intended for sixty prisoners, the stockade was crammed with two hundred male prisoners in 1859, including fifty Chinese. Prisoners slept in hammocks three tiers high. Prisoners worked in adjacent quarries which produced road metal for the Corporation of Melbourne.

In 1859 William Champ appointed two schoolmasters, and classes were held every evening. There was also a library of 500 books for the edification of prisoners. The Stockade was closed in 1866 and converted into a Lunatic Asylum. It later became the site of the Lee Street school.