Eyam
In 1665 the Plague was raging in London. A taylor from Eyam by the name of George Viccars ordered some cloth from the capital and it arrived damp and had to be laid out to dry. This released the plague carrying fleas and within days, Viccars fell ill and died. Several of his neighbours also died and some families began to panic and fled the area. William Mompesson, the rector, supported by Thomas Stanley, a former incumbent, feared that this would spread the disease over a wider area and asked villagers to quarantine themselves.
Food and medical supplies were left at various points on the village boundary. Eyam church was closed and services were held in Cucklett Delf, a valley nearby where a Plague Commemorative Service is still held annually. There were no funerals and families buried their own dead near their homes. At nearby Riley a Mrs Hancock buried her husband and 6 children in a space of 8 days. The Riley graves, as they are known, are still there.
The Plague ended in October 1666 and had claimed 260 lives in an 18 month period. Some of the cottages now carry a commemorative plaque.
The churchyard contains various interesting tombstones and monuments including ones to Thomas Stanley and Catherine Mompesson, the wife of William. She had stayed in the village with her husband and died of the plague in its later stages. It also contains a magnificent Celtic Cross, one of the finest in the country and probably a wayside preaching cross from the 8th century.
Most of the bodies were buried in the gardens and fields.
Eyam ghosts
Heroic Plague Village
Shiver around Eyam on an easy walking tour. From Hawkhill Road car park at the west end of the village you can take the following route around Eyam’s many haunted sites.
Phantom footsteps at Mrs Blackwell’s cottage
Go left out of the car park down onto Church Street and left again. The cottage is to the left of Pursglove’s Butchers. Former residents, the Blackwells used to hear footsteps approaching and the door would unlatch and swing open. But the footsteps never crossed the threshold. It happened so often the ghost was a nuisance. When they enlarged the cottage, they sealed up that doorway and made a new entrance. The change did not put the ghost off and these days he strides past the house and down the garden path.
Haunted Eyam Hall
Further along Church Street on the left is Eyam Hall. At least three ghosts have been recorded at Eyam Hall. The late Granny Lowe recalled the ghost of an old man, always sitting at a table in a top-storey room. There was a simple solution: the haunted chamber was kept locked!
The ghost of a woman walks down the stairs.
And a white horse sometimes appears, looking over the gate of Garden Croft near the hall. The horse is linked to the victim of an inheritance scandal.
Eyam stocks
Across the road from Eyam lie the stocks. They are one of the best examples in Derbyshire. Stocks as a punishment date back to Roman times but only came into English Law in 1351, under Edward III. Every town had to have one and it was to be used for people who refused to observe the law. In the 1600s a new law declared: everyone ‘convicted of drunkenness should be fined 5 shillings or spend 6 hours in the stocks’!
Eyam plague
Continue along Church Street to Plague Cottage on your left. Plague was raging in London during 1665. When cloth came from London to an Eyam tailor, journeyman tailor George Viccars hung it out to dry. Out hopped plague-infected fleas and bit George – who died a few days later. From 7 September 1665 plague rampaged through the village for 14 months, eventually killing nearly a third of the villagers. By June 1666, with the plague still raging, the Revd William Mompesson persuaded villagers to accept a self-imposed quarantine, to reduce its spread and protect other local villages.
The nursery rhyme Ring a’ ring a’ roses describes the symptoms of plague. One sign of the infection was a dark red rash like a ‘ring of roses’. A ‘pocketful of posies’ was a bunch of herbs people carried to ward off the disease. ‘Atishoo, atishoo’ was the sound of sneezing as the plague took hold. Finally came death – ‘we all fall down’.
The dog whippers of Eyam
Eyam’s churchwardens in the 1600s and 1700s were official ‘dog whippers’. They used whips before the service to drive dogs from the church. Eyam Parish Records state:
1727 – February 1st. Buried George Newton de Eyam. Dog whipper;
1748 – February 5th. Buried Stephen Broomhead. Dog whipper de Eyam, who had been overlaid in y snow upon Eyam Moor.
The haunted Rectory
Continue along Church Street, past the church and you will see the haunted Rectory on your left. One Rector’s overnight guests used to ask him whether someone had been ill in the night. They heard footsteps along the corridor and doors being opened and closed. He too heard these sounds and something resembling the rustle of feminine dresses.
A maid claimed she met plague vicar William Mompesson’s wife, Catherine, ascending the back stairs. She was wearing a large hat! Some say her ghostly whisper can still be heard.
A joke that went wrong at the Miners Arms
Continue along Church Street and go left up Water Lane to the Miners Arms. Many years ago Eyam’s Rector played the part of a groom in a drunken mock marriage, which he was forced to make legal! Reverend Joseph Hunt was in the Miners Arms and the bride was the landlord’s daughter. He was ordered by the bishop to marry properly. Joseph was already engaged and his fiancé tried to sue him for breach of promise. So the newly weds had to take refuge in the vestry to escape the law. There they spent the rest of their married life, and bore two children. They died in 1703 and 1709.
The Miners Arms has at least two ghosts. The first is a very sad tale. Here a shack was once built over a forgotten mine shaft. Some children accidentally started a fire. One girl tumbled to her death down the shaft, and another died in the fire. The ghosts’ footsteps are heard in the pub, and some people see moving objects.
A former parish council chairman reported seeing an elderly lady dressed in boots, black bonnet and sequin-trimmed cape entering the pub. Was she the wife of a former landlord, murdered in the 1600s?
The phantom cyclist of Eyam Dale
Return to Church Street, cross over the road and turn left down into Eyam Dale. Here the phantom cyclist is often heard, but rarely seen.
One dark night at Top Scrin a walker heard the swish of rubber tyres and the frantic ringing of a bicycle bell. He stepped aside quickly but there was no bicycle to be seen. One morning, two brothers had to leap aside to avoid a cyclist racing down. Again, they saw no one.
On a dark night, one of these same brothers was walking with his wife along Stoney Middleton Dale when they heard a cycle overtaking. They stepped aside to let it pass, at the same time a bus came round the bend, shedding light on the scene. And neither cycle nor cyclist appeared. A workmate later said he’d seen the same thing. The wife said that, although they did not see a cyclist, she saw his shadow and that of the cycle. Another witness was laboriously cycling up Eyam Dale, when a cyclist overtook him with effortless ease. Despite the pouring rain, the cyclist’s cape was dry!
