The jail that Oscar Wilde was imprisoned in could be turned into an art space and boutique hotel

Reading Prison has a storied past. It’s most famous for holding the writer Oscar Wilde for two years, and much later for becoming the canvas for a Banksy painting (pictured above), but since its closure in 2014 it seems that no one’s really known what to do with it.

The gaol was constructed back in 1844, but parts of it have been demolished since then. In its time the place operated as a jail and an execution facility for both high and low risk inmates, including Irish rebels involved in the 1916 Easter Rising, German prisoners during World War I, and a range of local criminals, before eventually becoming a young offenders institute in the 1990s.

Soon, however, Reading Prison hopes to have people come and stay on a much more voluntary basis, as its owners have revealed plans to turn it into a hotel and art space. Past schemes to repurpose the building, such as using it as a police training base or knocking it down to build flats, have all fallen through, but developers hope that this time will be different.

Wilde was interned in Reading Gaol on a charge of gross indecency, which is basically a ‘crime’ that the Victorians charged people with for being gay. Wilde would go on to write his final works about his time there, including the De Profundis letter to Lord Alfred Douglas. This is why the Ziran Educational Foundation (ZEF), which bought the prison off the Ministry of Justice in 2024, has said that it wants the site to become ‘a paean to unfettered creative expression, a refuge for artists worldwide who face persecution’.

More details about what exactly the space could look like will be revealed in summer, the ZEF added. It had previously worked with an Italian architect to produce some provisional designs, but they were rejected by the local council and Historic England for not reflecting the significance of the site enough. It’s currently looking for a new architect.

Once the ZEF has partnered with a new designer, it plans to host a ‘multi-disciplinary cultural programme’ at the prison this year to give locals an idea of the sort of thing they can expect if planning permission is granted – once it’s actually been submitted, that is.

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