I’m sure we’ve all heard the phrase, a certain someone being a bit of a pest. Well if you want the real deal, Odiham in Hampshire is one of a select club that still has a place to put its would be ‘Pests’.
These structures were built for isolation, a place where some poor soul, inflicted with plague or smallpox would be shut away. Food would be slid through a gap, the area left well alone by the local populace, the occupant to either rise again or fall.
The Pest House was a common sight for centuries, a simplistic form of bare hospital, missing the beside manner and support. There are very few of these left, as modern medicine and new theories in convalescence has moved on to merely shut someone away for weeks. One feature which does link this with all those Pest Houses which have been demolished or adapted, is its placement next to a graveyard, enabling a quick exit into the earth should the patient not make a full recovery.
This one, built at the dawn of the 17th century features a chunky chimney, an ample sized entrance door and a couple of windows to boot. In a time of window taxes, these daylight apertures would have more than likely have been timber boards, put up at night and taken down in the morning, letting the cold draught roll in and whip away the evil.
The last occupant of this rather sturdy brick house exited back in the 1930’s, a time almost within living memory - or certainly feels a little that way with the help of moving pictures.
Many were built across the land, but only a handful now survive, and Odiham’s is a real treat, still being available for all to view on weekends and in very good order too. It even survived the 1960’s and 70’s when it was threatened, as much of old England was, with demolition.
Next door, a flurry of Almshouses have sprung up, their arrival just a few short years after this ‘Pest House’ was constructed. The bricks are similar, the chimney stacks almost identical. Odiham’s Pest House probably didn’t have a chimney to start its life, so an upgrade of this kind was a big deal for all of it’s occupants.
It feels that way back in the 1600’s, the residents of Odiham were really rather well looked after, save for the occasional civil wars to upset matters. I still haven’t got the bottom of how the church town fell, at curiously just around the same time that Roundhead and Cavalier armies where trudging back forth across it crumbling graveyard.