Lessons from the plague village that isolated from the world

Locked contentedly into the rhythms of farming life and digging for lead on its Derbyshire Peak District slopes, the village of Eyam lay blissfully unaware of what was about to hit it, and propel it into the history books for ever. The Viccars family, the Reverend William Mompesson and his family, Elizabeth Hancock and her six children, 350 villagers at least… none had any inkling.

London existed in most minds only through talk in the public house, stories from travelling merchants and perhaps the first periodicals beginning to circulate in England. The metropolis was half a world away, a foreign place, a foreign culture.

News of the plague we now call bubonic will at first have been more of a curiosity than a concern. What became known as the Great Plague had struck London earlier in that year of 1665, but it was hardly the first epidemic England had seen. To the villagers of Eyam (pronounced ‘eem’) this may have looked like one more story to add to the stories of other countries told by firesides and candlelight.