If you’ve always dreamed of owning your own jail, here’s your chance. The old county jail in Dorchester, N.B. is up for sale.
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Owner Andrew Partridge says it’s time to part with the heritage building that is as notorious as the criminals it once held.
The property is listed for $159,000, complete with a view of the Dorchester Penitentiary.
Partridge said he bought the roughly 120-year-old heritage building about 16 years ago on a whim.
“The government had it advertised and I decided to put a bid in on it,” Partridge said.
Now he’s trying to sell of the building – cells and all.
Village Coun. Ben Edgett said he’d like to see the heritage building restored.
“We’d like to see something go in there either a small business, possibly a museum. Something to bring it back to the community. It’s the centre of the community really,” Edgett said.
Partridge said the jail housed its last inmate just over 20 years ago and said some pretty notorious criminals in the province have been held up in the cell blocks.
He added the last double hanging ever to take place in New Brunswick was back in 1936 right in front of the two cells in the solitary confinement section of the jail.
“It also served as death row because any inmates that were hung here, were hung right here,” Partridge said.
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It’s been widely reported in the village’s history that the notorious Bannister Brothers both convicted of murder were the last duo to be hung at the jail.
Partridge said some former employees of the jail have claimed over the years that the building is haunted, but he’s never seen evidence of that.
“I have had this building for 16, 17 years and I have been in every square inch of this building and have never had anything that I can’t explain,” he said.
Partridge has also converted a section of the jail into a gym and said that is for sale as well. He said he would like to see the property use for community purposes.