 For a period during World War II, Shepton Mallet Prison was used to store important national records from the Public Record Office, including Magna Carta, the Domesday Book, the logbooks of HMS Victory, dispatches from the Battle of Waterloo, and the "scrap of paper" signed by Hitler and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain at the Munich Conference of September 1938. The prison also became a US Army detention facility, and between 1943 and 1945, 18 American servicemen were executed within the prison walls, having been convicted by US court-martial of murder, rape or both.
