Watch Josh Okeefe singing "Dirty Old Town" in this prison
What happened here?
In 2018, Irish folk singer Josh Okeefe sat in a cell inside Shrewsbury Prison and performed Ewan MacColl's "Dirty Old Town" for the YouTube channel GemsOnVHS. The performance — raw voice, acoustic guitar, stone walls — became one of the channel's most-watched clips, and perfectly captured why this 200-year-old jail has become an unlikely venue for music.
Shrewsbury Prison, known locally as The Dana, was completed in 1793 to a design by architect John Hiram Haycock, with construction overseen by Thomas Telford. It stands on Howard Street beside Shrewsbury railway station, near the site of the medieval Dana Gaol. The prison operated continuously for over two centuries before finally closing its doors in 2013.
"Dirty Old Town" itself was written by Ewan MacColl in 1949 for the play Landscape with Chimneys, produced by Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop. The song describes MacColl's hometown of Salford — its gasworks, canals, and factory walls — and has since been covered by The Dubliners, The Pogues, and Rod Stewart, becoming one of the most recognised folk songs in the British Isles.
Okeefe, originally from Derby, is part of a new generation of folk musicians carrying the tradition forward. He has played the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival, Black Deer Festival, and Glastonbury, and spent time travelling across America in search of the places his musical heroes once roamed. His style — unvarnished, direct, rooted in storytelling — suits the prison's acoustics perfectly.
Since its closure, Shrewsbury Prison has been reinvented as a heritage attraction and events space. Visitors can take guided tours led by former prison officers, try overnight stays in the cells, and explore one of the largest and most complete surviving Victorian prisons in Britain. It has also become a popular filming location — a fitting second life for a building that now trades in stories rather than sentences.
