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Friday, 29 February 2008

Derbyshire County: Something in the Water? – Part 2

By Celia Jones

[Part 1 is here]

The present Duke of Devonshire had recently added to the garden a sculptured fountain called Revelation, a spectacular water-powered sculpture, which was 4 metres high, 5.6 metres wide and weighs 3 tonnes without water. In contrast with the traditional garden and fountains, this sculpture had a modern, space-age feel to it, and dramatically created a sense of suspense as we watched it slowly open its stainless steel leaves to reveal the secret golden globe within.

After enjoying the man-made splendour, we set off to explore the surrounding beauty of the dales in this area. These dales are usually cut by crystal clear rivers and often flanked by precipitous cliffs or pinnacles. From Monsal Head, we got a magnificent view down Monsal Dale and the Wye valley. In the distance was a picturesque old viaduct built in the 1870s to carry the Midland Railway. The railway no longer crosses the viaduct, but lots of young backpackers use it and the many accessible walking trails all over Derbyshire. The walking trails had only recently opened up again for walkers or “ramblers” after the end of the foot-and-mouth epidemic.

Despite the cool autumnal mists that veiled the surrounding slopes, we encountered large groups of people crossing the narrow country roads to follow these walking paths over the green rolling hills.

I preferred to drive on to a village called Hartington where my favourite English television medical series called Peak Practice was filmed. Tourists flocked to this village and the little general store/souvenir shop was full of curious fans of the show eager to pay top dollar for hand-knitted, woollen sweaters and carved walking sticks.

In keeping with our “medical themeM, my husband’s aunt took us to Eyam, a little village about seven miles to the north of Bakewell. It’s the sort of place that tourists in the area wouldn’t usually visit unless someone pointed it out to them.

Eyam is better known as the Plague Village and has a very tragic, but fascinating history. My first impression of Eyam was that it was another quaint village with a cluster of cottages known as the Plague Cottages, dating from at least the 17th Century. These cottages are inhabited today, but they are marked with the names of the family members who lost their lives in a 17th century outbreak of bubonic plague.

While exploring the adjacent church courtyard, I was struck by the weathered, crumbling tombstones in the churchyard, which gave evidence to the sad deaths of young children with the same last names who all died around the same time.

The tragic history and stories of the villagers of Eyam were exhibited in the church and recorded in a well-researched book by John Clifford called, Eyam Plague: 1665-1666. Clifford writes that in the 1600s, Eyam was a prosperous lead mining community with a population of about 800 inhabitants. An enterprising tailor came to town hoping to take advantage of the prosperity and lodged at cottage with a widow and her family. He ordered a box of second hand clothing from some wealthy London residents, who, unknown to him, had died of plague.

The contents of the box were found on arrival to be damp and were laid out to dry off before offering them for sale. It is thought that in the cloth were rat fleas infected with the bubonic plague bacilli; they were released as the cloth was unfolded and shaken. These fleas went out in search of nourishment and in a few days, the tailor, the widow and her family were dead. The people in the nearby houses soon became ill and died; six deaths resulted in three weeks as the disease spread throughout the town.

With no scientific background, many of the people saw the onset of the disease in supernatural terms, a sort of divine punishment, and they searched their memories for wrongdoings. One incident, where some young boys allowed cows to “enter the church and foul the nave”, was thought to have incurred God’s wrath. Others remembered the sounds of Gabriel Hounds (spirits of unbaptised children) as they hovered in the air over the moor above the village and white crickets on domestic hearths, sure signs of doom.

In an effort to keep the disease from spreading to other communities, Eyam was quarantined, isolating the members of the town and preventing them from fleeing and infecting other villages. Near the church is a spring covered by a gritstone slab where food and medical supplies were left and the villagers left money. The money was disinfected here by either running water or vinegar.

Since the town was not self-supporting, the Earl of Devonshire who lived in Chatsworth House, only a few miles away, became their benefactor providing food and medical supplies at his own expense. Some argued that the Earl’s generosity was only to insure his own and his family’s immunity to the plague by keeping the town cordoned off. It was ironically noted that the people of Eyam were better fed during the plague than ever before.

This self-imposed quarantine sealed the fate of the people of Eyam; if they had been able to shut up their homes and camp on the hillside, away from the rat-infested cottages, their rate of survival would have been much greater. One woman, who couldn’t stand the strain of seeing people dying around her, went to Tideswell market in the next town, where a guard at the entrance of the town let her enter. However, one of the shoppers from the town recognized her and shouted out, “A woman from Eyam!” The villagers started to throw whatever was at hand at the poor woman. Driven out and pelted with stones, she sadly returned to Eyam.

Fourteen months later, when the outbreak had finally run its course, there were only 430 survivors of a pre-plague population of around 800. However, the deaths were totally contained within the village. It says a lot for the integrity of the self-sacrificing villagers that they kept their word, with the exception of only two people attempting to leave the village during the outbreak.

As we drove over the Derwent reluctantly out of the Peak District, we wondered how this area came to inspire so much courage and creative expression in its inhabitants and visitors. Maybe, it was something in the water.

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