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History Of Eyam
The story begins in September 1665 when a contaminated parcel of cloth from London was delivered to the lodgings of travelling tailor George Viccars. Within three days Viccars was dead and the Bubonic Plague, which was decimating London's vast population, began to spread through the village.
Over half the population fled, including Squire Bradshaw and his family, but around 350 remained in the village trusting to God and providence. In an attempt to stop the spread of the disease to other villages, the rector William Mompesson aided by his Duckmanton-born Puritan colleague Thomas Stanley, called upon the remaining villagers to impose a self-regulated quarantine and the people agreed to what for many of them would become a death sentence.
Mompesson closed the church and services were held in the open air at a place called Cucklet Delf, and he sent his two young children away but his wife Katherine refused to leave, insisting that her place was by her husbands side. A stone boundary was set around the village and it was arranged by courtesy of the Earl of Devonshire that food and other necessities be left at various collecting points - such as the place that became known as ' Mompesson's Well ' - and coin in payment was left either in vinegar or in running water.
During the next fourteen months the plague claimed the lives of 259 villagers including rector's wife Katherine Mompesson, who became it's 208th victim, dying in her husbands arms on August 25th, just a couple of months before the cold autumn of 1666 eventually extinguished the disease. There was no time for funerals and victims were buried either in the churchyard, in their gardens, or in nearby fields - as in the"˜Riley Graves' where a Mrs.Hancock buried her husband and six children in the space of just eight days.
The legacy left by the plague is still evidenced throughout this close-knit community where many of the descendents of the plague survivors still reside. Commemorative plaques to the victims are displayed on the walls of the cottages where they lived - and died - over three hundred and thirty years ago, and their heroic tale is related to visitors in vivid pictorial displays at both the Parish Church of St. Lawrence and at the Eyam Museum on Hawkhill Road at the western end of the village.
The most popular time of the year to visit Eyam is in the last week of August during Carnival Week when the annual Sheep-Roast takes place and the village is thronged by thousands of visitors. Several wells are expertly dressed and the entire village is festooned with colourful bunting, with events rounded off by the annual Plague Commemmoration service, held on the last Sunday of August in Cucklet Delf.
But Eyam has far more to commend it than just an historic tale of self-sacrifice, as any walk around its pleasant meandering lanes and ancient buildings - many of them architectural gems - will show. The Domesday Book records it as Aiune - which rather mysteriously means "˜an island' -and though it mentions no church, it is probable that the Saxons had a church here on the site of the present Parish Church of St. Lawrence, which was built originally in 1150.
The complete and unbroken 8th century Saxon cross which stands close by the tomb of Katherine Mompesson in the churchyard, is regarded as the finest example of its kind in the county. Unusually the church has both Saxon and Norman fonts, some excellent Jacobean woodcarvings, including Mompesson's chair, and a unique sundial dated 1775 on the wall above the priest's door.
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