👮 New Year, New Experiences! Explore Peterhead Prison with one of our Officers! 👮 Book Your Guided Tour
Peterhead Prison is known as Scotland’s toughest jail. Built to hold the country’s most difficult and long-term prisoners, the prison’s remote coastal location and uncompromising design shaped a regime defined by routine, discipline and endurance. A Guided Tour is the most direct way to understand life behind bars at Peterhead Prison.
Your experience begins at the gates.
From the moment you arrive at Peterhead Prison, its isolation is unmistakable. Built on Scotland’s northeast coast, the prison was deliberately positioned to remove prisoners from society, reinforcing control through distance as well as design.
Your guide introduces the prison’s purpose, explaining who was held here, why Peterhead developed its reputation, and how its location influenced daily life behind bars. As you move through reception and onto the wings, you follow the same controlled routes prisoners once took as their sentences began.
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Life inside Peterhead Prison was defined by routine and endurance.
On the wings, your guide explains how strict regimes governed every aspect of daily life — movement, work, exercise and silence. The environment was deliberately austere, designed to enforce discipline and limit opportunity.
You’ll walk the landings as officers once did, gaining insight into how control was maintained over long-term prisoners and how repetition and monotony became central to incarceration.
This is prison life stripped back to its essentials.
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A Guided Tour of Peterhead Prison confronts the realities of long-term confinement.
You’ll visit spaces associated with control and punishment, where order was enforced and resistance managed. Your guide explores how discipline operated within a high-security environment and how consequences shaped prisoner behaviour over extended sentences.
These areas are presented with clarity and restraint, allowing visitors to reflect on the psychological and human impact of incarceration at the highest level.
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Your Guided Tour ticket includes:
Guided Tours are designed to give you a knowledgeable guide who provides detailed insight, historical context and storytelling throughout your visit.
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