Dickens Hill

Nick Cotton (left) and Den Watts (right) serve time together at Dickens Hill prison.

Dickens Hill is a fictional prison in the BBC soap opera EastEnders. The prison is part of a storyline that first aired between 1988 and 1989. The storyline centres on the popular character Den Watts and was filmed on location at Dartmoor Prison in Devon. The episodes were shot in a block of intensive filming, over five weeks, but they were worked into regular episodes of EastEnders later in the year, from September 1988 to February 1989. This was done in order to keep the character Den Watts on-screen after Den's actor, Leslie Grantham, had left the show. Although not part of the original storyline, the prison also briefly appears in 2017 when Max Branning (Jake Wood) visits his former cellmate, Luke Browning (Adam Astill). The prison also appears in a separate storyline in 2018 when Mick Carter (Danny Dyer) is on remand for the shooting of Stuart Highway (Ricky Champ).