The Asylum in Sarah Waters’ Affinity

Submitted: 13th February 2026

The Asylum in Sarah Waters’ Affinity

There are many places you can go to in fiction and be totally creeped out. The Asylum in Sarah Water’s Affinity is one that particularly made my skin crawl. Why? Sarah Waters is such a good and vivid writer that the way she evokes such a place is quite something.

The story is about two women – one is Margot who visits the dark place as a lady’s visitor – someone who goes into a prison to visit the prisoners for whatever reason. The prisoner is Selina Dawes who has been locked up following a spiritualist reading gone horribly wrong.

What happens next…..will surprise and shock you…but is the biggest shock yet still to come?

Location map in Affinity

Millbank Prison

It’s set in Millbank Prison, which was a real place. The small rock mound in the pic above marks the spot where the prison once stood.

The prison was opened in 1816 and closed in 1890. It was beset by problems of subsidence from the outset as it was built on marshy land. So, several architects were called in over the years to try and fix it. One feature that did last was the hexagonal shape and the courtyard.

The way the prisoners walk around this courtyard has a wonderful but haunting image to it:

Affinity Sarah Waters

Location map in Affinity

“We watched them from our high window and they looked small—they might have been dolls upon a clock, or beads on trailing threads. They spilled into the yards and formed three great elliptical loops, and within a second of their doing that, I could not have said which was the first prisoner to have entered the ground, and which the last, for the loops were seamless, and the women all dressed quite alike, in frocks of brown and caps of white, and with pale blue kerchiefs knotted at their throats.”

Location map in Affinity

In the story Margot comes to visit the prison and there she meets Selina, one of the prisoners:

“You have come to Millbank, to look on women more wretched than yourself, in the hope that it will make you well again.”

And the hexagon floor plan she describes is the one that existed:

Millbank Map (c) Wikipedia

This is a cold heartless place:

“We are not here to help them, ma’am. We are here to punish them. There are too many good women who are poor or ill or hungry, for us to bother with the bad ones.”

Location map in Affinity

It was great to visit this prison with Sarah Waters. Standing on the actual spot would give me the chills knowing what happened in the novel never mind in real life!

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