Eyam is a small village located 7 miles from Six Litton Mill.
The village has an interesting history from the time of the Bubonic Plague (“Black Death”) in England, which is poignant to remember in 2020.
In 1665 a tailor from Eyam ordered a box of materials relating to his trade from London, that he was to make into clothes for the villagers. He unwittingly triggered a chain of events that led to 260 Eyam villagers dying from bubonic plague – more than double the mortality rate suffered by the citizens of London in the Great Plague.
Between the first death and the last, the villagers set an extraordinary and enduring example of self-sacrifice by sealing off the village from the surrounding areas to prevent the disease spreading.
The villagers turned for leadership to their rector, the Reverend William Mompesson, and the ejected Puritan minister Thomas Stanley. They introduced a number of precautions to slow the spread of the illness from May 1666. The measures included the arrangement that families were to bury their own dead and relocation of church services to the natural amphitheatre of Cucklett Delph,[ allowing villagers to separate themselves and so reducing the risk of infection. Perhaps the best-known decision was to quarantine the entire village to prevent further spread of the disease.
Visit the Eyam Museum (www.eyam-museum.org.uk)
(Images courtesy of Stephen Colebourne – Flickr)