Front Range With Entrance Including A Wing And Link To Wing With Former Chapel

The building is a front range with an entrance that includes a wing and a link to a former chapel, located at HM Prison Oxford. The front range dates from around 1800, with mid-19th century and later alterations. The A Wing and the link were constructed between 1848 and 1856 by architects H.J. Underwood and J.C. Buckler. The structure is made of coursed rubble with stone dressings.

The front range is two stories high and features a Tudor arched, hoodmoulded entrance in a canted wing to the left. Originally, the entrance was located in the central crenellated tower, which has stone buttresses. The tower now has two hoodmoulded windows on the ground floor and one on the first floor, along with two cruciform arrow slits above and corbels below the parapet. The windows in the range are ashlar dressed and linked by continuous hoodmoulds at the ground floor, with sill bands at the first floor.

The interior has been converted for administrative use. Notably, public executions were carried out in the tower until 1863. The link building is three stories tall and features four windows deep, with each corner having a machicolated tower. The parapet at the front rises behind the former entrance tower, and there is a machicolated parapet on the returns. Although the interior has been converted for administration, the sanctuary arch, cornice, and raked floor of the former chapel remain intact.

The A Wing is three stories high with a semi-basement and runs parallel to the entrance range. It has stone-dressed windows with slightly pointed arches and continuous sill bands on the second and third floors. Large tripartite windows at the gable ends illuminate an internal atrium that has galleries leading to low-height cell entrances, with the cells being barrel-vaulted.