OWEN ROBERTS: These are grave markers. They're small stones

and they've got a rough cross sort of gouged into them.

So these were found in some of the fields around the village.

The Plague dead were not buried in the churchyard, they were

buried informally, in gardens and fields and so on, wherever

the bereaved families could actually get to.

They're such a symbol of that hurried, hasty, having to just

make do with the best of what you've got.

HELEN ANTROBUS: Sometimes appearances are deceptive, and a

place that looks beautiful can mask dark happenings in its

past.

The location for this story is idyllic, but what happened here,

over 350 years ago is anything but.

It's a picturesque village with quaint stone houses, a church,

tea rooms, nestled in Derbyshire's Peak District

National Park.

But its chocolate box appearance is a far cry from the suffering

and death that once happened here and the terrible choice

that its residents made for the sake of others.

Welcome to Eyam. The Plague Village.

Have you ever imagined being a fly on the wall of history? Join

me for an inside view of the stories of people, places and

moments that made us.

I'm historian Helen Antrobus. Lean in for a tale from time

back when.

Coming from not too far from Eyam, I've heard a little of its

story.

A Plague outbreak that took hold here and villagers that isolated

themselves to keep the disease from spreading to surrounding

villages. It sounds familiar but this was September 1665 to

November 1666.

When the Coronavirus took hold and lockdowns were imposed,

going through such a similar experience made me want to learn

more. So I've come to meet Owen Roberts, curator at Eyam Museum.

Hello, you must be Owen.

OWEN ROBERTS: Hello.

HELEN ANTROBUS: Now, we're not in the village as I expected us

to be. We're instead about a mile away on the eastern edge in

the middle of a field and my word the Peak District is

showing off for us today. The sky barely has a cloud in it,

the sun is beaming down on us.

We're in the middle of a lush green field surrounded by horses

but there's something really intriguing in the middle. We're

standing next to an enclosed wall of seven graves. Can you

tell me a bit more about it?

OWEN ROBERTS: Yeah these are the Riley Graves and they're called

that because of the farm, Top Riley, which is adjacent.

They are the graves of the Hancock family, and the first

member of that family died from the Plague on 3 August 1666. But

by the time a week had passed, on 10 August, Elizabeth Hancock,

the mother of the family, had buried her husband and six

children.

HELEN ANTROBUS: We're stepping through the wall now into the

gravesite and I can see all the names of Elizabeth's family.

John, Elizabeth, Alice and there's a name here, I mean it's

not very common, Oner, O-N-E-R.

And these stones, even though they are worn with time and

there's lichen on some of them, they seem really well kept and

in great shape. A lot of care must have gone into this burial.

OWEN ROBERTS: It's quite likely that Elizabeth, the mother of

the family, had to bury all her family members herself as it was

during the Plague outbreak.

HELEN ANTROBUS: It's thought the gravestones were added later by

the family's descendants keen to remember their relatives who

succumbed to the Plague. Thankfully, Elizabeth survived.

OWEN ROBERTS: She actually moved away from Eyam after the Plague

to Sheffield, we think, where her oldest son who had moved

away some years previously to live.

So we understand that that's where she went afterwards. But

her loss, losing all those children and her husband, was

quite typical of what could happen in Plague outbreaks in

this period.

HELEN ANTROBUS: So really there's more to this story whole

families were decimated and what I would really like to

understand is how a Plague that was rife in London made it all

the way up here to what really is a small enclosed community.

OWEN ROBERTS: Well let's go into the centre of Eyam and I'll tell

you a bit more about it.

HELEN ANTROBUS: We make our way down the hill and into the heart

of the village, stopping outside a stone cottage with a well-kept

garden. The first Plague victim, George Viccars, lived and died

here.

OWEN ROBERTS: George Viccars was a tailor's assistant, living

with his employers, Alexander and Mary Hadfield. In September

1665, a box of tailor's materials was delivered to this

house from London.

These were damp, so George Viccars laid them out in front

of the fire to dry. George became ill not long after this

and it's thought that the material was contaminated with

Plague and within five or six days of the appearance of those

first symptoms, he had died.

HELEN ANTROBUS: The Great Plague was rife in London when George

Viccars received his box of materials from the capital. It

was caused by bacteria transmitted to humans by the

bites of fleas or lice which were carried by rats.

The city was infested with rodents. They were attracted by

streets filled with rubbish and waste, especially in the poorest

areas.

Well, Owen, can you tell me what are the symptoms of the Plague?

OWEN ROBERTS: Yes, well it's called the bubonic Plague

because it causes these great lumps in the skin when sores,

which are called buboes.

So it's actually an infection in the lymph nodes, and it can

develop into pneumonic Plague, so it can affect the lungs.

And once it goes into the lungs, that means the disease can

spread even more easily through coughs and sneezes. So you don't

necessarily need fleas or lice to help in that situation. It's

very infectious.

HELEN ANTROBUS: So poor George Viccars, he becomes the first

victim of the Plague here. How quickly does it spread?

OWEN ROBERTS: Well, there were six deaths in three weeks in

other households, which from other research we think were

neighbouring houses.

HELEN ANTROBUS: By the end of October 1665 in Eyam, 29 people

had died, and by April 1666, the death count had reached 73.

With the mounting number of deaths, it's likely community

leaders were considering their options for containing the

Plague. But during the winter months, a lockdown wasn't

imposed.

OWEN ROBERTS: The infections from the Plague actually slowed

down during the winter, which is a pattern that you find in all

Plague outbreaks of this period.

So we don't think that any major public measures were introduced

at that point.

By June, when the weather became warmer the number of people

becoming infected and dying started to increase quite

rapidly.

So we think at that point special measures were taken and

we know that the community's religious leaders played an

important part in this and so if we go to the church now we can

tell you a bit more.

HELEN ANTROBUS: Let's go.

The parish church of St Lawrence is a short distance from George

Viccars Cottage. It's a medieval church surrounded by a graveyard

and is built in stone with a tower. And a stained glass

window.

OWEN ROBERTS: This particular window that you can see is a

memorial to what happened in Eyam during the Plague and

you'll see that in there are the figures of William Mompesson who

was Rector of Eyam during the Plague and his predecessor

Thomas Stanley.

William was quite new to the village when the Plague arrived.

He was quite a young man, he was only about 27 and he had a wife

Catherine and two young children George and Elizabeth.

He'd only arrived in 1664, the year before the Plague came.

His predecessor Thomas Stanley was still around in the village

at the time and the earliest accounts that we've got of the

Plague indicate that both these men played a key role in

supporting the community and making whatever arrangements

were made to help prevent the spread of the disease.

HELEN ANTROBUS: So the clergy took control. Would they get it

right?

OWEN ROBERTS: We do have some letters that have survived from

William Mompesson. We've got in the museum one of his letters

which refers to pest houses being set up.

Some sort of temporary accommodation for the sick and

the dying. We know that the Plague dead were not buried in

the churchyard in 1666.

There's lots of grave sites dotted around the village. There

were other sort of accounts that gain a lot of details about a

village quarantine, some kind of closure in the village. The

church was closed off during the Plague, that services were held

outdoors. Nobody was allowed in or out of the village.

HELEN ANTROBUS: That is a great ask to make of a community and

it seems like a great responsibility. Did everyone

agree to the quarantine?

OWEN ROBERTS: Well there's certainly a strong tradition

that the quarantine was agreed by the whole village and it's

certainly the case that the Plague didn't spread outside

Eyam but the exact details of the closure are quite hard to

find in the earliest records.

There is some folklore about some of the wealthier members of

the community leaving. Those stories exist as well as the

story of the entire village agreeing to observe the

quarantine.

HELEN ANTROBUS: William Mompesson, the Rector of Eyam,

stayed in the village throughout the Plague. But what about his

wife Catherine and their children?

OWEN ROBERTS: His two young children were sent to relatives

in Yorkshire. We know that he stayed from his letters and from

the subsequent records and that Catherine also stayed.

And Catherine was one of the Plague victims and died in

August 1666. She's buried here in the churchyard. There is a

tomb and you can still see it now.

HELEN ANTROBUS: Oh it's a beautiful tomb and it's

incredible to see the Latin carvings on the top. It does

stand out from the rest of the graves in the graveyard somehow.

It must have been hard for William to see this. At his

place of work every day, a sacrifice I suppose that he made

to the quarantine?

OWEN ROBERTS: Well yes and he talks about the death of his

wife in his letters. The letters that have survived include a

letter that he wrote to his children about the death of

their mother and it's very moving to read that account

where he obviously celebrates her virtue and what he does

describe as the sort of sacrifice that she made.

HELEN ANTROBUS: It just shows that no one was safe. From this

tragedy and from the Plague.

So the Eyam quarantine, just like our own lockdowns during

Covid, isn't straightforward.

OWEN ROBERTS: Absolutely, I think our experiences of

lockdown help us appreciate the complexity of these sorts of

community experiences. We all have different perspectives, we

all remember different things. It helps us understand that the

Plague in Eyam was probably something like that too.

HELEN ANTROBUS: In Eyam, under lockdown, despite the terrifying

situation, people had to adapt and find a way to continue their

everyday lives.

So tell me Owen, the village is closed off, how did those who

managed to avoid contracting the Plague feed themselves,

especially if they can't leave the village to go to the market

to buy food and supplies?

OWEN ROBERTS: Well to sort of talk about that a bit more, I

think it would be helpful if we went and looked at what we call

the boundary stone.

HELEN ANTROBUS: The boundary stone marks the boundary of the

parish with the neighbouring village but it's a bit of a walk

away from the church.

There is a replica in the museum just a short distance away.

Eyam museum is a treasure trove of objects and information that

reveal what it was like for people living through the

extraordinary and scary time of the Plague.

So Owen and I head there and take a look.

It looks like a boulder, six hollows on the top. The only way

I can describe them is almost like the top of a bowling ball.

What on earth were these for?

OWEN ROBERTS: We think it's where supplies were left during

the time of the village closure and food would have been left

here and in return the villagers would have left money and that's

where the holes come in.

The money, the coins, would have been placed in those holes

soaked with vinegar so the holes would have had vinegar in them

and the coins inside the vinegar.

HELEN ANTROBUS: Oh my goodness so I'm thinking now to a more

recent experience we've all been through and probably still

remember.

The vinegar is like a disinfectant so what we would

know as hand sanitizer in a way?

OWEN ROBERTS: Well yes it is really, I mean because the

antiseptic effects of vinegar were known it was thought that

that vinegar would cleanse the coins.

HELEN ANTROBUS: So Owen is it fair to say that they thought

you could catch the Plague by handling the same things?

OWEN ROBERTS: Yes that's right they did think that and we have

in the letter from one person that we have on display, there

is a reference at the very beginning to the letter having

been transcribed by somebody else.

Because William, as he writes, doesn't want to affright his

uncle, who he's writing to, by a letter in my own hands.

HELEN ANTROBUS: It's great to see the displays in the museum,

the boundary stone or historical hand sanitiser, and hear of

other original relics like William Mompesson's letters.

There were other accounts about what happened in Eyam too, but

these came many years after the last Plague death.

OWEN ROBERTS: The first accounts appeared in the very early

1700s, so a good 40 or so years after the Plague, and then

subsequent accounts towards the end of the 1700s start to

develop, all acquiring a bit more detail.

And eventually, by the time we get into the Victorian era,

where William Wood, who was a local historian, the chronicler

of Eyam, published an extremely influential book called The

History and Antiquities of Eyam.

And in there, you'll find all the details that people have

often heard of about the Ying Plague, which gives us an awful

lot of detail, but a lot of it is indeed folklore, and we can't

necessarily find some of those details in the earliest records

that have survived.

HELEN ANTROBUS: Now, let's talk about the Victorians, Owen,

because we know the Victorians loved a dramatic tale. Is that

what's happened here? Is there a lot of embellishments?

OWEN ROBERTS: Wood often likes to imagine scenes that happened,

things that were said, as if we know that they definitely were

said.

But obviously we have no record of what those conversations

actually were but that, imagining that scene, is quite

popular among 19th century writers and then it's reported

as if they were actually there.

HELEN ANTROBUS: Owen, please, can you tell me one of Wood's

tales from the time of the Plague?

OWEN ROBERTS: There is a famous romance and it's about Emmott

Syddall and Rowland Torre.

The Syddall family did exist and the story goes that Rowland

Torre lived in a neighbouring village and that they were

engaged and during the time the village was closed off they

would meet halfway in a secret place.

They agreed to meet sort of every day but then one day

Emmott doesn't arrive. So Rowland realises something must

have happened and when the village is opened up again after

the Plague, he runs into the village, sure enough to find the

news that, yes, Emmott had died.

HELEN ANTROBUS: I wouldn't call me a romantic, but I really hope

that story's true. It's really wonderful.

I'll put Victorian melodrama aside for now. And moving back

into reality, Owen takes me to see a rare surviving artefact,

an original 350-year-old letter from the hand of our

protagonist, Reverend William Mompesson, as he describes what

it's like to live surrounded by the Plague.

The first thing that strikes me is, I mean, the condition,

considering how old it is, is fantastic.

And just looking at what he's written here to his uncle. "My

ears never heard such doleful lamentations, my nose never felt

such horrid smells, and my eyes never beheld such ghastly

spectacles."

This letter really strikes me as a remarkable survival because it

does speak to the fear and the terror of what was happening

here in Eyam, but also to the very human reaction and approach

to survival. It really is phenomenal to see.

OWEN ROBERTS: We do have an extract of a second letter,

which was sent at a time when Mompesson himself thought he had

actually contracted the Plague and was about to die.

HELEN ANTROBUS: Now, this letter, Owen, your heart really

breaks for William, I think, in this, because he's talking about

his fears of death and dying, and succumbing to the Plague, to

his patron, and asking for prayers for his fatherless

children, which so many of his parishioners must have done

before him.

And there's this Fantastic extract where he writes, "and

with tears I beg that when you are praying for fatherless

children that then you would remember my two pretty babes."

He must have been really convinced of his own mortality

here.

OWEN ROBERTS: He did, and bear in mind it's the 1st of

September 1666, so it's barely a week after Catherine's death and

he's thinking he too may soon die and he's concerned about the

children. He wants to make sure that should anything happen to

him, those two children, George and Elizabeth, wouldn't be

forgotten.

HELEN ANTROBUS: So William's letters have survived. But what

happened to him? Did he stay in Eyam after the Plague?

OWEN ROBERTS: He did stay in Eyam for a few more years, but

not that long after, just about three or four years or so, he

moved to a different parish. It was in Nottinghamshire, northern

Nottinghamshire, where he did actually marry again and had

several more children.

HELEN ANTROBUS: On the 1st of November 1666, the Eyam Plague

came to an end with the death of Abraham Morton.

OWEN ROBERTS: He was a young man in his 20s and there were other

members of his family who had also died. There were 18 Mortons

in our list of Plague dead.

HELEN ANTROBUS: How many people died in total in Eyam?

OWEN ROBERTS: Well, 260 people died. The population of Eyam at

the time was about 800. So something like a third to a

quarter of the village all died.

HELEN ANTROBUS: For those who survived, some were able to

rebuild their lives.

OWEN ROBERTS: We find in the parish registers after the

Plague a number of pragmatic marriages of women who've lost

husbands, men who've lost their wives, and who are, you know,

joining forces and rebuilding families.

There are actually lots of people still living in the area

who are descendants of people who survived the Plague and we

do also get people who live much further afield, who've traced

their family history to Eyam Plague families.

HELEN ANTROBUS: It's really remarkable to hear about that

hope to end the story on, because we've heard so much

about the suffering during the outbreak of the Plague in Eyam,

but we've also heard about how the villagers showed so much

courage and resilience.

Even though we're looking back hundreds of years, it doesn't

feel like we have to reach that far back to understand that. Our

own actions and experiences through the pandemics and

lockdown feel so similar to the experiences of the families

here.

OWEN ROBERTS: Yes, I think that, you know, since we've all been

through Covid and everything that that brought, it does help

us to understand these momentous events really in our sort of

shared human experience.

And in Eyam today, What happened in the Plague is commemorated

still on Plague Sunday, which is the last Sunday in August.

There was a procession from the church to Cucklet Delf, which is

the outdoor spot where we think services were held during the

time of the quarantine. Flowers are still placed on that day on

the tomb of Catherine Mompesson as a symbol of all those who

died.

HELEN ANTROBUS: Once upon a time, this might have felt like

ancient history but hearing the story of Eyam, it's impossible

not to feel so connected to this community, despite the centuries

between us.

We've all been through the hardship and suffering of a

pandemic and a lockdown. But as a country, we've come out of the

other side with glimmers of hope and I think an appreciation of

community and togetherness.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Back When.

If you've enjoyed it, make sure you follow, rate and review us

on your favourite podcast app.

And if you fancy visiting Eyam yourself, go to

eyam-museum.org.uk for more information. We'll be back in

two weeks with another story. See you next time.