It was from this hut in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, where Edward Jenner dispensed his revolutionary smallpox vaccine for free in the 1790s. Photo / James O. Davies via The Washington Post
Visitors to Jenner’s Hut could be forgiven for believing they’d stepped into a J.R.R. Tolkien novel.
This tiny garden shed is tucked away on a quiet path winding through a rewilded English garden, decorated with folksy bark carvings and topped by thick thatch.
A fairy-tale character wouldn’t look out of place peeping from its entranceway.
In fact, it was once the site of something miraculous.
It belonged to Edward Jenner, an 18th-century doctor who pioneered the world’s first vaccine - and transformed this hut into the world’s first vaccination clinic.
Some 230 years later, conservationists say it needs saving.
Last week, it was placed on Historic England’s register of “at risk” places, among thousands of sites the national heritage body says have fallen into a state of disrepair, neglect, or decay.
“This tiny, humble hut was the place where history changed,” said James Rodliff, director of the Jenner Museum, which manages the structure.
The hut had been looked after fairly well, but its organic parts - such as the thatched roof and wooden components - were starting to degrade over the years, he said in a phone interview.
From this hut in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, Jenner dispensed his revolutionary smallpox vaccine for free in the 1790s.
It operated under the same principle as the vaccination clinics that so many became familiar with during the Covid-19 pandemic, Rodliff said.
“People came in to have a vaccine, for free, to protect them.”
Originally built as a garden folly, Jenner’s Hut - or the “Temple of Vaccinia”, as the doctor rechristened it - paved the way to an era of modern medicine, forever remoulding humanity’s relationship with so many deadly diseases.
In 1796, Jenner discovered that the deadly smallpox virus could be prevented with cowpox.
He noticed that local dairymaids seemed to be protected from smallpox, hypothesising that it was due to their exposure to the less dangerous cowpox.
In an experiment that would horrify modern medical ethicists, Jenner extracted pus from the rash of a local dairymaid infected by cowpox and injected it into a healthy boy, the son of his gardener, whom he then exposed to smallpox. The child did not become ill.
Gross. But the technique - which to this day provides the fundamental basis of modern vaccine technology - offered lifesaving immunity.
For years, hundreds of villagers lined up on Sundays to receive small cuts to the arm, into which Jenner would smear pus-filled discharge from a stranger’s cowpox lesions. The word vaccine stems from its use by Jenner, the Latin word for cow being vacca.
The vaccination clinic also spawned the world’s first anti-vaccine movement.
Given Jenner himself could not explain why the vaccine actually worked, many Britons were deeply sceptical.
Some feared it violated humans’ natural, God-given healing powers. Others were concerned that organic matter from a cow would cause humans to sprout horns and hoofs.
The vaccine’s efficacy proved to be its greatest advocate, and it soon spread around the world. By 1809, the United States held its first municipal smallpox vaccination campaign in New England.
Before the era of modern temperature-controlled medicine transport, the vaccine was sailed around the world using dubious practices.
The 1803 Spanish Balmis Expedition circumnavigated the globe and vaccinated hundreds of thousands of people in the process. Twenty-two orphans were used to keep the vaccine alive across oceans.
By sequentially infecting the boys with cowpox every few days over the course of the voyage, organisers were able to keep the vaccine alive.
Within two centuries of Jenner’s discovery, the World Health Organisation declared smallpox eradicated in 1980.
Now, smallpox vaccines are no longer provided to the general public unless needed.
Many believe the vaccine to be among humanity’s greatest scientific accomplishments. Over the course of 3000 years, smallpox had killed hundreds of millions - often painfully and quickly.
“Hundreds of millions of people’s lives have been saved because of Edward Jenner’s quest to eradicate smallpox, which was just one of the most horrendous diseases,” Rodliff said.
“It killed so many people, especially children. It maimed. And we’re in danger of potentially forgetting that horror.”
At Jenner’s Hut, the use of so many natural building materials have not lent themselves kindly to the passage of time.
According to Rodliff, much of the decorative bark has been lost and the thatched roof needs renewing.
The interior plaster is also cracking, he said, and the evergreen trees planted in the years since its construction have blocked out the direct sunlight needed to keep the roof dry. “If it doesn’t get saved then it will be lost,” he said.
Rodliff said the museum has secured some funding to repair the shed and hopes to begin work in the northern spring. He’s hoping visitors will be able to join in and help with the thatching.
“Go and stand in that exact spot and just silently just be there and just take stock of what happened,” Rodliff said. “The world needs to look after this place.”
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