5,000 people visit Shrewsbury's Dana prison

And now prison bosses will be opening up the Victorian Grade II listed building for more tours – but this time they will be chased by blood curdling zombies.

Tours of the site, which dates back to 1793, have proved to be such a success that now the owners of the Dana have decided to repeat the venture and open it up for more people to see inside.

Guided history tours for later this month have now gone on sale along with night time tours which will uncover the grisly side of prison life.

Joel Campbell, from Jailhouse Tours, said he was delighted with the success of the tours and ticket sales were well ahead of projections.

He said: "We have had 5,000 people through the doors on various tours. We have been very, very busy. The tours have been very successful and really seem to have captured the imagination of people.

"There seems to be no slowing down in the amount of interest and we will continue doing the tours while the demand is still there. We had done a projection of the number of visitors and it has well exceeded that. We have been told that we can carry on using the prison until next August, but should the planning process be delayed in any way I don't see that those behind the redevelopment of the prison, The Osborne Group, would mind letting us stay on."

The latest venture on the cards for prison visitors is Lockdown, which will see students from local colleges and theatre groups, dressing up in prison garb and chasing paying guests around the confines of the prison.

And it is to host the county's first ever prison based zombie chase event.

"We are going to run a zombie chase event," he said. "It will be very different to what we normally do. The idea of the chase is that guests have to evade the zombies while completing a mission with a set of sub-objectives. They will be chased by lots of very angry zombies.

"The zombies will be made up of volunteers from Shrewsbury College and New College Telford as well as local theatre groups. Their make up and clothing will be provided for them and then they will be let loose."

Bookings for the events, which will run over three nights are going well.

"We will be running this for groups of 16 at a time and aim to have 340 people altogether," added Joel. "It should be a great event."