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In a land of moorland heights, ravines and pretty dells lies this charming Queen of the Peak, whose old stone houses line the long, wide, old-world street on a terrace of the hills.
It looks up to Eyam Edge, rising 400 feet above the village, and reaches down to the grand gorge of Middleton Dale, with its own delightful Cucklet Delf and Eyam Dale, shut in by rocky heights and a fine plantation.
Its hills are riddled with caverns and the earth with old lead mines; its moor, crowned by Sir William Hill, 1407 feet above sea-level, is rich in burial mounds and stone circles, among them the Wet Withens.
It has a fine house, and old church, and in the churchyard one of the finest Saxon crosses in the land: it has associations with a group of lettered folk through whom it came to be called the Athens of the Peak. It has humble cottages, its simple graves, its memories of simple folk, and it is with these that its imperishable story lives.
Plague Cottage, a 17th century house near the green, recalls the dark past of this attractive moorland village. Eyam (pronounced 'E'Em') stood remote and isolated in the 17th century, 800 feet up among the Derbyshire peaks. Yet it could not escape the plague that was raging in London. It was in September 1665 that a box of tailor's cloth and some old clothes came from London to this cottage near the church, and with it bitter tragedy for the village - tragedy which turned this peaceful village into a place of death, for it brought the plague that had raged in London for many months.
The first of its victims was the journeyman who opened the fateful box - he died within four days. By the end of the month five more had died, and by October a score and more. For more than a year the pestilence pursued its savage way, abating with the winter months only to burst out with greater violence in the spring. In March, 56 are said to have perished.
All the time this village of grief and despair was a place of quiet heroism, the herosim of a little band who stayed to serve, of a panic-stricken people who in the very face of death resigned themselves to follow the path they were asked to tread. It was their rector, William Mompesson, who persuaded them to stay, and so stopped the disease spreading to other districts.
The courage and self-sacrifice of Mompesson and his parishioners was paid for dearly, out of an estimated population of 350, some 250 died, including Mompesson's wife.
The villagers arranged for food to be brought from outside and left at certain places on the boundaries they fixed, the money left for payment being carefully washed before it was taken away.
One of the appointed places, since known as Mompesson's Well, is covered with a block of stone, on the edge half a mile north of the village. The horror of it all increased as the months went on, and deaths were so frequent that the passing bell ceased to toll, and the grave-yard ceased to take the dead. Graves were dug in gardens and fields and often those spared had to bury their own loved ones.
At one house a woman watched her family die within eight days, husband and six children. The Riley Graves of the Hancock family can still be seen, a pathectic circle of six headstones and a tomb. The tomb of John Hancock, the father, is in its original place, the stones having been brought together from about the field.
Plague Cottage was the home of George Vicars,and behind it is the church of St Lawrence. In the church is a carved oak chair which belonged to Mompesson, and in the north aisle is the chest which is supposed to have contained the infected clothing sent from London. In a limestone valley called The Delph is Cucklet Church, a natural cavern where Mompesson held his services after the village church had been closed to prevent the disease spreading.
Every year when Feast Day comes, on the last Sunday in August, a great procession treads the way to the simple Cucklet Church in memory of the sufferers of over three centuries ago. The churchyard with its fine trees is rich indeed in story.
There is an elaborate sundial of 1775 on the wall of the church showing 'the parallel of the sun's declination for the months of the year, the scale of the sun's meridian altitude, points of the compass,and a number of meridians'. Many of the epitaphs were written by two poets who knew this place. One was Richard Furness, a village boy born in 1791 and buried here, a preacher and soldier before he was 20 and afterwards schoolmaster of Dore, where he designed a new school-house and was a doctor for all. The other was Peter Cunningham who was curate here for 18 years and wrote poems that no-one reads.
The most precious thing the village has is in the churchyard, a Saxon cross which has come through more than a thousand years in almost all its glory, complete with head and arms, only two feet of the top of the shaft is missing. It stands eight feet high and is carved all over with fine design. On the head and arms are angels with crosses and trumpets, while the shaft has knotwork and lovely scrolls with foliage, and figures of a man with bugle horn, and the Madonna and Child.
In the centre of the village is the charming great house, at the roadside facing the stone pillars of the ancient stocks. Grey stoned and many gabled, set in terraces and lawns,it was built by the Wrights in 1676 and is said to be a copy of the old Bradshaw Hall of Eyam whose stones were used in its construction.
Still lived in by the Wright family, it is now open to the public and is a lovely example of the smaller manor house of which Derbyshire has perhaps more than its share. As a much loved family home, it has accumulated furniture, portraits, tapestries, and objects of interest over the centuries. Visitors here will see the impressive sone-flagged hall, the tapestry room, the bedroom with its magnificent 17th century tester bed, and the old kitchen, all under the watchful eyes of portraits of previous generations of the Wright family. All visitors to Eyam Hall are given a conducted tour. Tuesdays when the Hall is closed the house is dedicated to the needs of schoolchildren and a 'hands-on' session is available.
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