On Prescot Street in Liverpool there’s a former police station known today as the Bridewell Studios and Gallery. It was here, in the late 1970s, that much of Alan Bleasdale’s highly acclaimed TV drama, Boys from the Blackstuff, was filmed.

The building had been empty for some years when David Clapham, an artist and documentary film-maker, took it over in 1976 after learning of an Arts Council scheme to provide more workspaces for artists. Money would be available, he was told, if he could find a suitable building and sign a lease on it.

“I had this partner called Charlie Alexander who was connected with the Liverpool School of Language, Music, Dream and Pun on Mathew Street,” Clapham said. “Charlie had kind of fallen out with them and needed his own studio space. That’s when we found the Bridewell.”

Its owners, Merseyside County Council, had no use for the building after the police abandoned it. In the meantime it had fallen into disrepair and thieves had stripped out its electrical fittings, together with all the brass and copper.

“Charlie, quite cleverly, went to see the County Council and said we would take the building on provided they gave us a substantial rent-free period in which to restore it,” Clapham said.

“They gave us a year – which was enough time to sign the lease, access the 16 grand that was the up-front payment from the Arts Council and to restore services in the entire building, though it wasn’t glamorous.”

An unexpected financial boost came a year or so later, thanks to Boys from the Blackstuff. Clapham got a mysterious approach about hiring out the building for a film crew. “I asked who it was for and they were quite evasive. They said it’s a BBC thing but it’s more kind of socially orientated.” His initial hesitation melted away, though, when he asked how much they would pay: “It was a substantial sum.”

“They took over virtually the entire building and moved in catering facilities and things like that. There were large cables everywhere. They were there for months but we could still work in the studio space.” Clapham himself was working in one of the old police cells.

Boys from the Blackstuff is a tragi-comic story about five jobless Liverpool men struggling to make ends meet and hold their families together in a time of economic depression.

To supplement their unemployment benefit the men take cash-in-hand construction work on a building that – ironically – turns out to be for the Department of Employment. This brings them to the attention of social security fraud investigators known colloquially as “sniffers”.

One of the Bridewell’s windows figures in the climax to the drama’s first episode. Chased by the sniffers, plasterer “Snowy” Malone tries to escape by shimmying down a rope through the window. The rope gives way and he plunges 30ft to his death.

“Snowy” Malone tries to escape

In reality, though, no one was hurt – thanks to the skill of a professional stunt man. “He knew exactly how to do it,” Clapham said. “He got a load of very strong cardboard boxes, roped them together with a tarpaulin over the top and he fell back onto them.” He was uninjured because the boxes collapsed, breaking his fall.

The stunt man’s fall

In Bleasdale’s story, another of the characters, Chrissie Todd, gets drunk one night and has a row with his wife who complains of having empty cupboards in the kitchen and only “two ounces of Spam and a quarter of brawn”. Chrissie storms out, strangles some chickens, shoots a goose and eyes up the children’s pet rabbits as a possible food source.

Off-camera, though, nobody was going hungry – courtesy of the film crew’s caterers. They weren’t serving up Spam and brawn, though – it was French cuisine with wine, and word soon spread around the district.

“As soon as they opened up the catering facilities just about every little scally from Low Hill would to go down there. They were all sending their kids down with a basin saying ‘I’m an extra in the film’.”

Clapham had his fill too. “Every lunchtime if I was at the Bridewell I used to go down and get mine. The guys were happy to serve just about anybody who turned up because they charged the BBC per meal.”

• David Clapham was interviewed for Liverpool People’s History in February 2025. The Bridewell currently hosts 35 studio-based artists and craftspeople. Since 1981 it has been run by Artspace Merseyside, a non-profit company. The building has been Grade 2 listed since 2007.

PS: If you are wondering about the word “bridewell”, it’s explained here.