Puckle Cottage

Puckle Cottage is a Grade II listed building located in West Malling. Originally built around 1760 as a Pest House following a plague outbreak in 1756 that claimed 64 lives in one week, it was situated a quarter mile from the town for isolation. The earliest part of the cottage consists of one room on the ground floor and another on the first floor. It was soon extended to add two more rooms, and in the late 18th century, an adjoining two-up two-down cottage was constructed, creating an L-shaped layout.

The cottage is timber-framed and primarily clad in weatherboarding, with stone and red brick on the ground floor and right end. It features a tiled roof with two brick chimneys. The front elevation has three windows: a 12-pane sash, a 9-pane sash, and a central sliding casement. The ground floor includes a modern 20th-century window, a 20th-century door, and a French window. The right side elevation has one sash window on the ground floor and an extension with two casement windows. The left side has a mid-19th century doorcase with a penticed weather hood on brackets and a four-panelled door, where the top two panels are glazed. The rear elevation features a weatherboarded mid-19th century outshut with one sash window with four panes, a casement, and a 20th-century plank door.

Inside, the dining room has a ceiling with criss-cross timbers, including sections of hop poles and reused timbers, indicating that the Pest House was built quickly and cheaply. A plank in the kitchen bears Roman numerals VI to XI, suggesting it was an 18th-century measuring rule removed from the first floor. The cottage has four-plank doors. The first-floor room previously had carvings of names from 1763 on the original doors, but these were lost in a fire in 1979. By the time of the Tithe Map survey in 1841, the building was no longer functioning as a Pest House and was occupied by two labourers and their families, referred to as Pest House Cottages. The history of the building has been researched and documented in a report by Mr. Vernon Leonard, a former owner.