It was here that 23-year-old Cornishman Russell Pascoe was hanged for the murder of a 64-year-old recluse in a remote West Country farmhouse. His accomplice Dennis Whitty met the same fate, at the same hour, in Winchester Prison.
Between 1875 and 1963, 17 people were hanged at Horfield, the eldest being 49 and the youngest just 21. Their bodies, as was the custom, lie in unmarked graves.
Before a hanging went ahead, the prison governor had a huge checklist to work through.
The practicalities included arranging a list of executioners, testing the execution tools (this meant a new rope) and ordering the coffin.
Then there was the posting the Order for Execution at the gate and, when it was all over, arranging for the burning of the man's papers and clothes.
The condemned man had to be informed of the date of his execution and the prison officers cautioned to be extra vigilant and to keep silent about any confessions.
This was the scenario into which 24-year-old prison officer Robert Douglas, who had only been in the service for 18 months, was drafted down from Birmingham Prison at short notice.
His brief, he recalled, was to look after the prisoner for six weeks to 'make sure that he didn't come to any harm.'
His prison officer mates considered the drafting as good as a holiday.
'They always gave a condemned man at least three clear Sundays before his execution,' Douglas explained, 'so that he had time to make his peace with God.'
In those days, Horfield was seen as pretty unique. The former officer explained: 'Bristol was the only prison in the country with its own self-contained, purpose-built, condemned block.
'This meant that, once sentenced, prisoners didn't have to come out for anything - except for a final appeal hearing in London at the Old Bailey.
And that was why we didn't hear anything about the demonstrations at the main gate.'
Douglas said that Pascoe was a sociable kid who laughed easily - 'very much a Cornish farm lad.'
He remained cheery, the officer supposed, because he hoped his appeals would be successful.
Pascoe pleaded that it was his accomplice Whitty who had struck the fatal blow. He had merely hit the farmer with an iron bar.
But in those days that made him an accessory to murder, an offence which also carried the death penalty.
Theft, rather than murder, had been the condemned mens' motive. The recluse had £3,000 hidden inside the farmhouse but the bungling duo had left with just £4.
The officers, who played many hours of Monopoly and cards with the condemned man, kept a close watch on him, especially when he was shaving.
They listened to the radio together - Douglas recalls that Pascoe didn't seem particularly interested - talked and told jokes.
After his legal appeal had failed and the only slender hope left was clemency from the Queen, the officer would bring Pascoe a cream doughnut every day to try to cheer him up.
'I suppose I felt sorry for him, in a way. He was only a young chap, a year older than me, in fact,' recalled Douglas.'But hanging was the law and I was just doing my job. I spent 15 years in the prison service but was never asked to be with a condemned man again.'
Gloom settled over the cell after the executioner, Harry Allen, had appeared with the Governor to shake Pascoe's hand, something that the recently retired hangman Albert Pierrepoint had also made a point of doing.
And, just like Pierrepoint, Allen left without saying who he was.
Douglas spent the very last night in the cell with Pascoe, who was mercifully sedated. Woken in a groggy state at 7am he was made ready at 8am.
From walking into the condemned man's cell to tying his hands behind his back, walking him out onto the trapdoors, fitting leg straps, slipping a hood over his head and rope around his neck and then pulling the lever which released the trapdoors beneath him could take as little as eight seconds.
Ten to 12 seconds was considered the norm, anything longer, unacceptable.
The cause of death was nearly always cited as 'a dislocation of the vertebrae' - in reality the quick snapping of the spinal cord. It was, explained the authorities, a swift and painless way to go.
'Afterwards Allen came back into the mess' said Douglas. 'The cigarette which he had started and then left in the ashtray was still burning. He picked it up, took an appreciative draw and asked, 'Any tea on the go.'
'Was he any bother' asked the officer. 'No, good as gold' said Allen.
l If you would like to read more about Robert Douglas's fascinating life as prison officer in Birmingham and Durham - he was responsible for looking after Charlie Wilson, the Great Train Robber - his lively autobiographical book, At Her Majesty's Pleasure, is now out. It is the final part of a well received trilogy of memoirs. Published by Hodder and Stoughton the book costs £16.99.
