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Collingwood Stockade

Collingwood Stockade was one of three stockades erected in the early 1850s, simultaneously with the fitting out of ship hulks, because of prison overcrowding. The stockade, located in open country in Carlton with prisoners labouring in nearby bluestone quarries (now Curtain Square), operated from 1853 to 1866 when its prisoners were transferred to Pentridge. Its rough timber buildings held about 60 prisoners, but by the late 1850s bluestone buildings behind a perimeter wall accommodated up to 300. These buildings were reused first as the Carlton Receiving-House for the Insane and later as the Carlton Stockade School (now Carlton North Primary School), which opened in 1873. The superintendent's residence survived until 1913, and bluestone from the stockade was incorporated into the 1877 school building.

Alan Mayne