The Old Gaol Building is a historic

wood Wood is a structural tissue/material found as xylem in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulosic fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin t ...

and

iron Iron is a chemical element; it has symbol Fe () and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, forming much of Earth's o ...

building dating from the 1900s in

Ingwavuma Ingwavuma is a town in the Umkhanyakude District Municipality of KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa. It is unclear where the name of the town came from; one theory is that it was named after the Ngwavuma River while another is that there was ...

KwaZulu-Natal Province KwaZulu-Natal (, also referred to as KZN) is a Provinces of South Africa, province of South Africa that was created in 1994 when the government merged the Zulu people, Zulu bantustan of KwaZulu ("Place of the Zulu" in Zulu language, Zulu) and ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

. The building is located near the welfare buildings. In 2004, the building was restored as part of a project run by Nansindlela School. H.C. Lugg, Chief Native Commissioner of Natal in the 1930s, described the Old Gaol as it was in 1920 in his book ''A Natal Family Looks Back'' as follows: "The gaol, like the court house, was also constructed of wood and iron. One day its walls were blown down, but soon re-erected by the convicts. Any attempt by a prisoner to escape, was followed by a hue and cry in which the convicts took part, never failing to get their man."

References

Defunct prisons in South Africa Residential buildings in KwaZulu-Natal {{Prison-stub