The Plague Village of Eyam and Stella's Kitchen

A Village of Self-Sacrifice and a Unique Restaurant

The Idea

Derbyshire

In April 2020, when the Covid lockdown was at its most Draconian, I posted Swynnerton: A Village in Lockdown. I thought at the time it would be interesting, when this was all over, to visit Eyam and see how their experience of the plague compared with our experience of Covid.

The idea went on the back burner for a while. Then my friend Brian pointed me towards an episode of the Hairy Bikers Go North which featured Stella’s Kitchen, just outside Eyam. A historical trip with a special lunch seemed an ideal birthday day out, and so it became.

The Peak District

Although it is less than 45 miles from home, the journey to Eyam takes an hour and a half. The village is in the Derbyshire Dales, in the heart of the Peak District, Britain’s oldest National Park…

The Peak District and Eyam

… and roads in National Parks are not engineered for speed.

A Peak District major road - and there are many lanes

We crossed the southern end of the Peak District, known as the White Peak, a limestone upland riven with deep valleys. In summer it can look colourful and bucolic, but in the winter it becomes muddy and monochrome.

The White Peak, drystone walls and green fields

The north end, the Dark Peak consists of moorland over Gritstone so it looks wild (and muddy) all year round. A few hills rise from both the limestone and gritstone (see Shutlingsloe; Cowpat Walk 5) but despite the name, the Peak district has little in the way of peaks.

Eyam

Eyam is a large village with almost 1,000 inhabitants. As so often in Peak District villages, houses have dark stone walls and dark slate roofs. They do not look their best when the weather is wet or gloomy, but on a sunny summer’s day, festooned with hanging baskets, they are a delight,

Eyam (a photo with no hanging baskets and four empty window boxes!)

Tax records suggest the population in the 17th century was about 750. The population of many Peak District villages has dwindled over the last couple of centuries as traditional industries have disappeared. Eyam’s lead mines have long been worked out, cottage industries like shoemaking and wool and silk weaving moved into factories in towns, even the dairy industry has departed looking (quite literally) for greener pastures than Eyam's cool climate and poor soil can provide.

But tourism has seen Eyam buck the trend; it is not just another pretty Peak District village, it is a plague village with a unique story.

Bubonic Plague

Originating, probably in China, around 1330, the Black Death moved westward. Medieval people travelled less and more slowly than we do, Covid took weeks to reach Wolverhampton from Wuhan, the Black Death took 16 years to arrive in what is now Türkiye. Spread within Europe was faster, the disease reaching these islands in 1349. It died away in 1351 after killing 25-30% of Europe’s entire population.

It died away but never disappeared, a second outbreak in England ten years later killed a further 700,000 out of a surviving population of 2.5 million.

Sporadic outbreaks continued across Europe for the next 500 years. In London in 1592-3 the plague, as it was now called, killed 20,000 and closed the theatres. Shakespeare fled to Stratford and wrote 5 plays, though not his best, those came later. A major outbreak hit London in 1665. It took a while for the news to reach Eyam, and when it did, they saw in reason to worry. London is 140 miles away, surely a safe distance.

The Plague Comes to Eyam

In early September 1665 a parcel of clothes sent from London was delivered to Alexander Hadfield, the village tailor. He lived a cottage near the church with his wife, Mary, Edward and Jonathan Cooper, her two sons from a previous marriage, and his assistant/servant George Viccars.

The package was opened by Viccars on the 6th of September. Some stories say he found the clothes damp, so hung them up to dry. Whether he did, or not, Viccars soon showed symptoms of plague, and was dead by the end of the next day. Four-year-old Edward and twelve-year-old Jonathan died within weeks. Alexander Hadfield, avoided infection then, but succumbed later in the outbreak. Mary Hadfield survived though she lost 13 relatives. The house became known as ‘Plague Cottage.;

Plague Cottage, Eyam

Plague also cut a swathe through their neighbours. At Rose cottage, next-door Thomas and Mary Thorpe and all their seven children would die…

Rose Cottage, Eyam

…on the other side Peter Hawksworth and his son Humphrey died at the start of the outbreak. Peter’s wife, Jane, survived but lost 25 relatives.

The Hawksworth Cottage, Eyam

Plague: How not to Catch it and How to Cure it if you Do

In the 17th century diseases were thought to be caused by miasma, bad air that could be detected by its evil smell. To protect themselves people would carry posies of sweet-smelling flowers or smoke a pipe and surround themselves with a cloud of tobacco smoke.

But these methods did not even address the right problem. The plague is actually a disease of fleas. The disease killed the rats they usually fed on, so they moved on to humans, it killed the humans too and then it killed the fleas.

Ring-a-ring o' roses,
A pocket full of posies,
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all fall down

Eyam’s plague museum resides in the former Methodist chapel. Putting a bacillus on display is not practicable, so it is, inevitably, a little short on artefacts, but its plentiful and excellent explanation is a major source for what follows.

Eyam plague museum

One artefact it does have, however, is a plague doctor’s suit, recently made to the traditional design. I am not sure how realistic his height is, but the beak would have been stuffed with posies to minimise any chance of breathing in the deadly miasma.

Lynne and the Plague Doctor, Eyam Musuem

The suit looks less bizarre when compared with some suggested treatments. If there do a blotch appear; take a pigeon and pluck the feathers off her tail, very bare, and set her tail to the sore, and she will draw out the venom till she die; then take another and set her likewise, continuing so till all the venom be drawn out, which you shall see by the pigeons, for they will all die with the venom as long as there is any; also a chicken or hen is very good. (thanks to the Museum for that).

Covid is different, spreading either through contact with droplets or inhalation of aerosol (an odourless miasma!) expelled by sufferers’ coughs and sneezes. Masks, social distancing and sanitisation of hands and anything they would touch are the best preventions. Most of us dutifully followed the instructions, and they were effective - up to a point.

Treatment came from a growing list of anti-viral drugs like remdesivir and dexamethasone (who makes these names up?) but the game changers were the vaccines.

It is easy to mock the long beaks and plucked pigeons of the 1660s, but they did their best, given the knowledge of the time; they had no drugs, and no concept of vaccines. It is tempting to mock those, mainly in the USA, who chose their treatment for political rather than medical reasons; no masks, no vaccines, and plenty of ivermectin – very effective against parasites, but no more use against Covid than a bare-arsed pigeon. Some died for their beliefs, their choice, I suppose, but their arrogant selfishness was a danger to all. It is wholly appropriate to mock our (thankfully ex) prime minster, who made the Covid rules but felt little need to follow them himself, and still does not understand what he did wrong.

Stella’s Kitchen

It is time to break for lunch.

Stella used to work for the UN, married a Peak district man and 14 years ago came to live just outside Eyam. Originally from Cameroon she joined the church to become part of the community, started taking food to sharing lunches and now has the Peak District's only restaurant serving African and Caribbean food. It is not entirely a conventional restaurant.

Stella's Kitchen, Eyam

Stella featured in the Hairy Bikers Go North (part 7). The link is to the BBC iPlayer and Stella’s section starts at 21 minutes. iPlayer is only available in the UK (I think) and this series of the Hairy Bikers is available only until mid-November 2022.

There is a limited lunch menu – we went for the meat platter – and on this day a limited clientele, we were the only customers. Stella has no alcohol licence; you can take your own, but I was driving and we decided to stick to her hibiscus brew, nostalgically reminiscent of the karkadeh we used to drink in Sudan all those years ago (1987 to be precise).

A glass of sorrel/folere/bissap - and other names

The meat platter has pork, chicken (cooked from scratch while we waited), fried plantain and ‘spinach supreme’. The meat was top quality and superbly cooked. I thoroughly enjoyed it all, but was mildly disappointed by the shortage of ‘unfamiliar African flavours,’ perhaps Stella plays safe at lunchtime. The evening buffet offers mores choice and things with unfamiliar names, so perhaps we should go and spend a night in Eyam sometime soon. It was my birthday, so I got a picture with the lady herself.

Me, Stella and the meat platter

Meanwhile, Back in Eyam

After 30 deaths in September/October 1665, the disease abated. There were deaths every month, but never more than a handful until spring 1666 when they started rising again.

Despite the miasma orthodoxy, it was obvious the disease spread from person to person. The plague had largely been contained in London, but the Eyam outbreak could potentially spread it much further.

Some villagers looked to the vicar, William Mompesson, for leadership but the monarchy had been restored only 5 years previously after 11 years of the puritan Commonwealth, so Mompesson approached Eyam’s former minister Thomas Stanley. Although Mompesson had replaced Stanley after the ‘Great Ejection’ of puritan ministers in 1662, the two agreed to work together for the greater good.

The finest artefact in the museum is a carved wooden bench dated 1664 bearing the names of William Mompesson and his wife Catherine. I am not sure it is best shown off in a tableau.

The Mompesson's bench, Eyam museum

They decided to put the village under, what we would might now call ‘lockdown’ until the disease burnt itself out. Catherine Mompesson could have left before the lockdown was announced in May 1666, but chose to stay and help her husband.

Under the new arrangement families were to bury their own dead wherever they could. Most were marked with nothing more permanent than a cross scratched on a stone.

Grave marker, Eyam Museum

Only one stone with a name is known to exist. The gravestone of one-year-old Alice Rag (or Wragg) was found beneath the floor of the post office during renovations in the 1960s.

Headstone of Alice (W)rag(g), Eyam Musuem

Church services were moved out of the church into a nearby natural amphitheatre to allow for what we have learned to call ‘social distancing’.

The entire village was quarantined. Supplies was sent by merchants from surrounding villages who left them on marked boundary stone. Holes were bored in the stones and filled with vinegar to disinfect coins left in payment.

The Survivors and the Dead

Deaths peaked in August when over 70 died, but by November 1666 the disease had burnt itself out. The plague in London had already been stopped in its tracks by the cleansing effect of the Great Fire of London which started today in 1666.

William Mompesson listed the deaths of 278 people, over a third of the village’s population. It is sobering to read the names of the dead. John Naylor, Ruth Talbot, Anne Chapman, Matthew Elliott all died of plague in June 1666, but they could well be the names of those who died of Covid in June 2020.

Nobody fully understands why some died and some lived through it untouched. Elizabeth Hancock was never uninfected despite burying her six children and husband in eight days. Marcus Howe, the village gravedigger handled dozens of infected corpses but came to no harm. Thomas Stanley and William Mompesson survived, Catherine Mompesson died on the 25th of August. She alone of that cohort is buried in Eyam churchyard.

The tomb of Catherine Mompesson

Led by Mompesson and Stanley, the people of Eyam made a remarkable and selfless sacrifice, but their deaths were not in vain, the disease spread no further.

And That’s the End of the Plague?

Photographs (though not the text) from here on are non-plague related photos of Eyam, it isn't all about death and disease.

Bubonic Plague has not revisited these islands since the end of the Eyam outbreak. The last outbreak in western Europe was in the 1700s. So, it’s all over, isn’t it?

Unfortunately not. Worldwide there are 1,000 – 2000 cases reported every year. Adding in unreported case, 5,000 seems a reasonable estimate with well over 100 deaths.

Eyam Hall, right in the centre of the village
Built by the Wright family in 1672. They still live there

And it does not only happen in places so eloquently described by the charming ex-president of the United States as ‘shit-hole countries'.

We spent the academic year 1983-4 in the USA living in Washington (the western state not the eastern city). One day local news reported the death from plague of a man in the city of Yakima. Yakima was 120 miles away, as the crow flies, and the other side of the Cascade Mountains, but it felt too close.

During our Spring Break perambulations, we parked our tent for a night in the Lava Beds National Monument in northern California. Signs all around the campground said (these may not be the exact words) ‘Our chipmunks look cute, but do not be tempted to pet them, they carry plague.’ We spent the next night in a motel in Klamath Falls, Oregon, partly to avoid the plague and partly because spring in northern California was so very much colder than our naive expectation.

Laburnum Cottage Eyam, mainly 18th century, but in part the oldest inhabited building
in the village. How old? Nobody's telling.

Plague still has to be watched carefully, the death rate for untreated victims, like those at Eyam is 30%-60%. It is caused by a bacterium, not a virus, so the disease can be effectively treated with antibiotics, lowering the death rate to 1%-15%. There is also a vaccine.

So Would you Prefer Plague, Covid or Cake?

Cake, thank you very much, but if it has to be a disease…..

8th Century cross, Eyam churchyard. Labelled as Celtic (seems unlikely) others
say the style is typical of the Kingdom Mercia (and Eyam was then in northern Mercia)

…we survived Covid in reasonable comfort. With no jobs to lose and a stable income, our only privation was having to cancel various trips around this country and beyond. We cancelled our holiday in Ukraine saying we would do it when Covid was over – or so we thought!. Others had a harder time, I know, but….

The village green and the stocks, Eyam

… we are all 21st century softies. I wonder how many would survive the discomfort, the dirt, the monotonous food and the inability to switch on a light or a heater when needed, never mind the plague. We are used to 21st century comfort and 21st century medical care and nobody in 17th century Eyam cancelled a holiday abroad, or had even dreamed of such a thing existing.

12th century font, Eyam Church

So the question is meaningless, and the answer remains, cake.