Peak Experience

 

London’s Great Plague rode to Eyam in the summer of 1665, hitching a lift on a bolt of cloth sent to the village tailor.  The vicar responded to the disease by placing the village in quarantine from the rest of the world.  He stopped the plague spreading through Derbyshire but condemned over 200 villagers to death.  Yet there is still more to Eyam than this story of sacrifice.  An ornately carved Anglo-Viking stone cross stands in the churchyard. Eyam Hall dates from the 1600s and is open to the public.  The village was an important lead-mining centre until the 1800s.

 

A picture of the eyam cross A picture of the eyam stocks

 

You can follow the many stories of Eyam through display panels and an audio tour of the village.  There is also Eyam Museum and a plague exhibition in Eyam church.  Eyam Hall has restaurant facilities and local craftspeople’s workshops.  There are regular bus services, car parks and public toilets in the village.

 

George Viccars, the tailor’s assistant, opened the package on its arrival.  He became the first of many to die violently from the disease.  260 of the 800 people living in the village were dead in just over a year.  That the plague did not spread beyond Eyam shows the vicar’s success in persuading the villagers to keep themselves in quarantine.  Neighbours left food and other goods for the Eyam villagers at boundary stones on the edge of the village.

 

The desperate villagers tried all sorts of cures.  Some thought a pigeon could suck out the evil that caused the disease through its bottom.  Perhaps an early discovery of the antibiotic properties of pigeon dung?

 

We can also imagine that people wondered why some died and others lived.  Survivors had a chromosome that gave them protection, a genetic trait that has been passed down in the village to today.

 

And the nursery rhyme?  It originates from London’s plague.  Victims developed a rosy coloured rash.  Posies were bundles of herbs and spices carried to ward off the disease.  ‘A-tishoo’ of sneezing accompanied the final fatal moments of the victims.  And they ‘fell down’ dead.  The whole process might take as little as 48 hours.

 

Eyam Hall was built in 1672, only six years after the plague ended.  It was built in the style of Elizabethan grand houses, though Queen Elizabeth had died nearly 70 years before!  Was the owner deliberately looking back to an earlier age?  Or was it simply an old-fashioned design still thought to be trendy in Eyam?

 

A pictuire of eyam hall A picture of eyam church

 

The church of St Lawrence was built in the 1200s AD.  In the churchyard you can find a beautifully carved stone cross decorated with plants, leaves and figures that appear to represent the Virgin Mary with child.  It was made 400 years before the church was built.  Perhaps the cross was moved to its current position, or maybe it is evidence of an even older church here.

 

To plan your journey to Eyam, which has direct buses to Buxton, Chesterfield, Manchester and Sheffield, visit Traveline or ring Traveline on 0871 200 2233.