25 years on: Lancaster photographer captures spooky and atmospheric pictures at Lancaster castle and former prison

And thanks to his ambitious project to photograph the people and places of the Lancaster district in the year 2000, he soon found out.

Dave persuaded the authorities to allow him to photograph inside the Castle which, at that time, was Europe’s oldest prison still in continuous use.

As Dave’s photographic project - A Little English City - celebrates its 25th anniversary, we are featuring some of Dave’s images from that shoot together with some scenic pictures of the Castle and Priory.

“I saw the prison in action and occasionally got a glimpse at something of the history, “ wrote Dave in his photographer’s diary.

“ ‘Come look over here,’ Ian Sanderson (my guard) beckoned.’This piece of wood is over 1,000 –years-old’ or ‘this is an engraving by an inmate held here in the 1800s’ or ‘this was the cell where the

Quaker leader was held’”.

“Turning into a courtyard I felt the temperature drop, as Ian explained: ‘This is where they used to hang them. It was a terrible place to meet your end’.”

“I found it all fascinating but felt robbed that I had lived in the city for so many years but never had the chance to see this before.”

However, disaster struck when Dave, accompanied by Ian, returned to Folly to develop his photographs.

“As the films went into the warm up drum I turned on the lights so Ian could see what was going on, and then disaster. The lid of the drum just popped off, as if the ghosts of those that lay beneath

the flag stones wanted their memory wiped from the history books. I grabbed it and thought I might have saved something.”

All was not lost but the final images had lost all the red from the negative.

“They left a cold, ghostly selection of pictures from what I was starting to believe was a haunted venture I was not authorised to disturb.”

All of the photographs taken by Dave for A Little English City can be viewed online at https://djclark.com/2000/ and copies of his book, are still available to order via the website.