About
The National Justice Museum in Nottingham occupies the Shire Hall and County Gaol on High Pavement in the historic Lace Market district — a magnificent neoclassical building that served as Nottinghamshire's combined courthouse and gaol from the 1770s until 1991, when the courts finally moved to new premises. The museum, which opened in 1995, uses the authentic historic spaces of this extraordinary building to tell the story of crime, punishment, and justice from medieval times to the present day.
The Shire Hall on High Pavement was built largely between 1770 and 1777 to the designs of James Gandon and is one of the finest Georgian civic buildings in the East Midlands. Its classical facade and grand interior reflect the authority and majesty with which Georgian society invested the process of law and justice. The building combines in one structure the functions that were central to the administration of justice: the courts where cases were heard, the cells where accused persons awaited trial, and the gaol where convicted criminals served their sentences.
The building's authenticity is the source of its extraordinary power as a museum. Visitors move through spaces that have witnessed the full range of human drama — from minor misdemeanours to capital crimes, from the desperate poverty that drove most Victorian crime to the corruption of public officials, from the wrongful conviction of the innocent to the rare moments of institutional reform. The Georgian courtroom interior is one of the finest surviving examples in England, its original fittings largely intact: the judge's bench, the dock, the public gallery, the witness box, and the jury box all remaining in their original positions.
The prison cells are perhaps the most viscerally affecting spaces in the museum — small, dark, damp, and utterly comfortless. Prisoners awaiting trial or serving short sentences were held in conditions that would be recognised as torture by any modern standard. The punishment of transportation to Australia, the treadmill, the crank, hard labour, and solitary confinement are all explored through the material evidence of the cells themselves and through the personal records of prisoners who passed through this gaol.
The legend of Robin Hood — the great English myth of the outlaw hero — is directly connected to Nottingham, and the museum addresses this tradition within its broader exploration of crime, justice, and the law. The historical reality behind the legend, the ways in which the myth has evolved and been used across centuries, and the social conditions that gave rise to outlawry in medieval England are all explored with scholarly care and popular accessibility. The museum is one of the most popular destinations in Nottingham for school groups.
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Highlights
The Georgian Courtroom
The Georgian courtroom at the Shire Hall is one of the finest and most authentic surviving courtroom interiors in England — a space of architectural grandeur and historical drama that has served as the setting for the full range of human legal encounter since the 1770s. The original judge's bench, dock, jury box, witness stand, and public gallery all survive in their historic positions.
Visitors to this room are in the presence of two centuries of justice, mercy, and miscarriage — the wooden surfaces worn by the hands and feet of countless defendants, witnesses, lawyers, and juries who passed through this space.
The Victorian Prison Cells
The prison cells beneath and within the Shire Hall represent the operational reality of the Georgian and Victorian justice system — spaces of confinement, deprivation, and suffering that served as a physical reminder of the consequences of criminal conviction. The cells are small, dark, and uncompromising: their dimensions, materials, and atmosphere convey the deliberate privation of Victorian penal philosophy far more powerfully than any textbook description.
Visitors who enter these spaces invariably come away with a visceral understanding of the conditions endured by prisoners in nineteenth-century England.
Crime and Punishment Through the Ages
The museum's permanent collections trace the history of crime and punishment from the medieval period through to the present day, exploring how society has defined crime, organised its detection and prosecution, and punished those convicted.
Ducking stools, the stocks, public execution, transportation, the treadmill, the crank, solitary confinement, and modern rehabilitation programmes all appear in the narrative. The collections include punishment equipment of a kind that is profoundly uncomfortable to contemplate, and the museum handles this material with historical integrity rather than sensationalism.
Robin Hood — Myth, History, and Justice
No museum in Nottingham can avoid the legend of Robin Hood — the great English myth of the outlaw who robbed from the rich to give to the poor. The National Justice Museum explores this tradition from a particularly appropriate angle: the legal and social context of outlawry in medieval England, the ways in which the law was perceived as the instrument of the powerful against the poor, and the social conditions that gave the Robin Hood myth its enduring resonance.
The museum distinguishes carefully between historical record, literary tradition, and popular mythology in its exploration of this complex cultural phenomenon.
Collections
The History of Crime and Punishment
Comprehensive permanent galleries tracing crime and punishment from medieval times to the present, with authentic spaces including the Georgian courtroom and Victorian prison cells.
The Robin Hood Story
Exploration of the Robin Hood legend in its historical, legal, and cultural context.
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.