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Eyam~the Plague Village

The Great Plague of 1665 is thought to have wiped out nearly a quarter of the population of London, but nowhere did it hit harder than the small Peakland village of Eyam.

In the autumn of 1665, a box of cloth from plague-hit London was delivered to a tailor who lodged with the widow Mary Cooper in a cottage near the church. It was the start of a twelve-month epidemic which swept through the village and killed 267 from 76 families - leaving perhaps only one in four of the total population alive.

But the real story of Eyam’s `visitation’ by the plague is not just one of a tragic loss of life. For the villagers, led by their young Rector, William Mompesson, and his nonconformist predecessor, Thomas Stanley, were determined to try to halt the deadly spread of infection to the surrounding villages. They instituted a self-imposed quarantine on the village, and grimly waited it out as the infection took its deadly course.

There are touching reminders of this noble act of self-sacrifice in and around the village even today, in the shape of family graves in the fields and memorials in the church. And the epic stand by the villagers is still celebrated each year in a special commemoration service, linked with well-dressings.