A pest house is the post-medieval forerunner of an isolation hospital, managed by a parishSmallest administrative unit in England. and intended as a place of quarantine for those suffering from serious communicable diseases. They were thus often built on the outskirts of towns and villages, away from the local population.[1]
Pest houses were initially used to isolate those with leprosy, and then the plague when it first arrived in England in the mid-14th century, hence their alternative name of plague houses. After the plague subsided, they were used to isolate the victims of smallpox.[2]
There are five surviving pest houses in England,[3] none of them still used for their original purpose:
Plague stonesHollowed out stones or boulders containing vinegar to disinfect coins, usually placed at or near parish boundaries, relics of medieval plagues.
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