The Chantry, the house that Edward Jenner owned from 1785 until his death in 1823, was sold by his descendants in 1876. In 1885 it was sold again, to the Church of England. It then became the vicarage for Berkeley, to replace the old vicarage where Edward Jenner had been born in 1749. When the Diocese of Gloucester decided to sell The Chantry in the early 1980s it was realised that it would be the ideal home for a museum to honour Jenner.
An appeal was launched to raise the money necessary for its purchase. The encouragement and support of the British Society for Immunology and the World Health Organisation played a significant role in obtaining donations from companies in the pharmaceutical and other branches of industry. Success came largely because of a substantial donation from Mr Ryoichi Sasakawa of Japan.
The museum
The Edward Jenner Museum at The Chantry opened to the public in 1985. A separate building that had once been Jenner’s stables was converted to house a small conference centre.
In 1996 two rooms on the first floor of The Chantry, were converted into an exhibition of modern immunology. The museum had quietly but significantly changed its role. Originally it had been primarily retrospective, looking back at the achievements of Edward Jenner himself, and protecting the home in which he had worked. After 1996 the Jenner Museum became pro-active in promoting a public understanding of immunology, the science underlying Jenner’s work and developed from it.
First Broadcast: 27th December 2009
A self confessed super fan of Most Haunted and editor of GhostMag.com. Matt’s passion for ghost hunting began when he moved into a haunted house in his second year of university in Leicester! His favourite location is the Niddry Street Vaults in Edinburgh.