Sessions Restaurant

Support our Catering & Hospitality students during our lunch or evening service.

Enjoy a delicious, carefully crafted menu, prepared and served by students as they learn the ins and outs of the industry.

Whether you're dropping in for a coffee in our barista section, attending a cocktail-making class in our mixology suite, or sitting down to a two- or three-course meal in our newly renovated restaurant, you’ll enjoy excellent quality food and drinks at a fraction of the price.

The building was built to house the Sessions House and City Jail in 1805-9. The building is classed as a Grade II listed building. It cost £4.380 to build and contained all the facilities demanded by prison reformers of the time but when completed it was criticised as “looking more like a gentleman’s house than a prison”.

It remained the city’s main jail until 1872 when the Victorian one on Greetwell Road (in Lincoln) was completed. The building continued as a magistrates’ court until 1990. There are many original features throughout the building: the courthouse, stone floors, stone stairways (the wear in them is not allowed to be corrected), typical Georgian windows in the roof and around certain parts of the building. Iron Gates and old cell doors can be found around the building, including the original iron door that was the boundary between the court and the prison.

The original prison was demolished and rebuilt in 1844-5. The prison was a Debtors Prison and needed rebuilding because of overcrowding and because originally men and women had not been separated. The original intention of the new Victorian prison was for prisoners to have an individual cell, but it’s thought that possibly eight people may have been held in the cells during periods of overcrowding. Each cell would have had a water tap, gas light, bed (which was a hammock slung from wall to wall). The basement is a mix of construction as it is believed much of the stone work comes from the 12th century Saxon Church of St Rumbold, which once stood on the same site.

The building had a £2.4m refurbishment, before being reopening by the college. An unusual discovery was made during the renovations in the Probation Room. A sealed room was found with the door plastered up on the inside. Whoever did this could only have got out through the roof. The flooring outside this room also at different levels. The builders and architects working on the refurbishments could give no reason as to why this would have had happened.