As no detailed histories of the outbreak were written until the 1700s, there is no single account of how the plague started in Eyam. However, most historians now agree it arrived when infected cloth was delivered to the village tailor from London in late August or September. The cloth was invested with rat fleas now known to be the cause of the Black Death.

The tailor was one of the first residents to catch the deadly disease, and the outbreak soon spread through the village, taking the lives of whole families and households – but strangely sparing the lives of others.

A difficult decision

Seeing the death toll rise, the village rector William Mompesson, with the support of his predecessor Thomas Stanley, urged his parishioners to quarantine themselves to stop the spread of the disease. In making the decision, the villagers were effectively choosing death instead of life, but Mompesson urged them to find strength in their religious convictions. 

The quarantine also meant plague victims were buried near homes rather than in the cemetery, and that services would be held in the open air rather than the close confines of the church to minimise the risk of infection. Residents even had to engrave their own headstones after the stonemason died. At nearby Riley a Mrs Hancock buried her husband and six children in the space of eight days. The Riley graves can still be seen today.

Another provision of the quarantine was the establishment of a "cordone sanitaire" – a boundary around the village beyond which no Eyam resident, sick or apparently healthy, could pass. The surrounding villages showed support for Eyam by providing food and other supplies to its inhabitants, leaving these goods at the edge of the boundary, despite the risks that this entailed. Eyam residents would pay for the supplies by leaving money soaked in vinegar at collection points. Goods also came from the Earl of Devonshire who lived in nearby Chatsworth House. Read more about Chatsworth House here. 

Sticking to the rules

Before the boundary was in place, some of Eyam’s wealthier families fled their homes, something poorer tradesmen couldn’t afford to do. But surprisingly, after the border was set up few people tried to cross it, even as the death toll continued to rise. However, one story from the time tells of an Eyam woman who broke the quarantine to visit the nearby village of Tideswell on market day. Once she was identified, she had to run back home under a barrage of missiles. There's also a touching tale of two lovers who were separated by the boundary. They could not touch, but talked to each other across the stone.

The plague continued to tear through the captive villagers, sparing only those who escaped the infection by chance and, as scientists are becoming increasingly convinced, those with a natural immunity which left them resistant to the disease.

Mompesson’s wife, Katherine, was not one of the lucky ones. She was the 208th victim, dying in her husband’s arms.

An end in sight

Yet Monpesson's provisions ensured that the sickness did not spread – even to the nearby villages of Grindleford or Bakewell. By the autumn of 1666, the outbreak finally ended. With food supplies short, and villagers becoming more vigilant about cleanliness, the infected rat population died out. The village eventually recovered from the tragedy and today Eyam contains many families that can trace their ancestry to the time of the plague.

This remarkable story of courage and sacrifice has meant Eyam is perhaps the most well documented and heavily visited of all Derbyshire villages.

For more tales of English bravery, click here to read all about the Stiff Upper Lip