Hello and welcome to Red Lines, out of the studio for the second programme in a row as it happens.

I'm Mark Carruthers and today we're looking at how we value or don't value our built heritage

and I'm standing in the old B-wing in Crumlin Road Jail in Belfast, a building that's now 180 years old

and of course there's not a prisoner in sight.

The jail closed down in 1996,

but its story didn't stop there. Today the building plays host to a stream of visitors. It hosts

conferences and it even produces whiskey. More about that later. It's a good example of how public

ownership led to the restoration and maintenance

of a valuable heritage site, while across the road, Cromland Road Courthouse, which has been privately owned since 2003, has fallen into serious disrepair.

We'll hear about plans to redevelop the courthouse later, but let's start with an overview of this building, the jail,

and hear a bit about its history through the decades. Dr Michael Liggett is well placed to do that for us.

He's a local historian who's researched and written about the jail and he was one of the first people to organize tours of the site over 15 years ago.

He also knows the building from the inside out,

but we'll come onto that in a moment.

Michael, why does this 180-year-old building matter

in the story of Belfast?

I think it's really important because,

well, the history of Belfast is encapsulated in the walls of this deal.

The whole story of the Gale is all about working class Belfast.

The majority of people who were in here throughout all of those decades would have been working class people

whose histories are never ever told in the history books.

None of us ever really get told about local history

...