Hazells Histories – Plague & Pestilence

These were not uncommon in days gone by. Leprosy, a terrible skin disease spread by mucous secretion was once widespread in the country. In Bury St Edmunds, those unfortunate to contract it were cared for at a Spittle House corner of Chalk Road and Risbygate Street and further along at St Peters Hospital, care being the optimum word as there was no known cure.

In this same street was a base of one of the town’s boundary crosses, known as the Plague Stone. This had a hollowed out top to disinfect coins with vinegar during times of the plague commonly known as the Black Death (Bubonic Plague). This was transmitted by fleas from rats and arrived in the town in 1348 and stayed around via different outbreaks for over three hundred years.

By the middle of the C17, it was obvious that isolation was one way of controlling this non-discriminating disease. The town gates were monitored, and a pest house shown on the Warrens map of 1791 as being off Hockwell Went (todays Barons Road) had been built to quarantine suspected sufferers. As time progressed, better treatment, diet and living conditions improved people’s health.

In recent years, the £1,000 profits from the 1907 pageant were used to build a sanitorium, which opened in January 1910 at the corner of Shakers Lane and Rougham Hill. In 1917 it became The West Suffolk County Council Sanitorium for the treatment of contagious diseases, such as tuberculosis, but only having 12 beds for men. During WW2, another sanitorium for treating diphtheria opened up on the corner of Sicklesmere road and Nowton Road – both buildings now long gone.

Hazells Histories are kindly provided by renowned local historian, Martyn Taylor.