Eyam
" EYAM , a parish in the hundred of High Peak, county Derby, 5 miles N. of Bakewell, its post town, and 12 S.W. of Sheffield. It includes the townships of Eyam, Foolow, and Woodland Eyam. The river Derwent passes close by the parish. The greater part of the land is pasture and meadow, with a considerable tract of moor and woodland. In September, 1665, the infection having been conveyed hither in a package from London, four-fifths of the inhabitants of the village were carried off by the plague.
The living is a rectory* in the diocese of Lichfield, value £226. The church is an ancient structure, nearly covered with ivy. It is dedicated to St. Helen, and contains monuments of the Middletons and other families. The parochial charities produce about £20 per annum. The Wesleyan Methodists have places of worship in the parish, and there is an endowed free school. Fairs are held on the 13th April, 4th September, and 18th October for live stock and provisions. The dukes of Devonshire and Buckingham are lords of the manor."
[Description(s) from The National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland (1868)
Transcribed by Colin HINSON ©2003]
EYAM (St. Helen), a parish , in the union of Bakewell, hundred of High Peak, N. division of the county of Derby; containing, with the townships of Woodland-Eyam and Foolow. There is a place of worship for Wesleyans . [1]
Eyam is associated as the "plague village". The plague had been brought to the village in a flea-infested bundle of cloth that was delivered to tailor George Viccars from London.
Within a week he was dead and was buried on 7 September 1665. After the initial deaths, the townspeople turned to their rector, the Reverend William Mompesson, and the Puritan Minister Thomas Stanley. They introduced a number of precautions to slow the spread of the illness from May 1666. These included the arrangement that families were to bury their own dead and the relocation of church services from the parish church of St. Lawrence to Cucklett Delph to allow villagers to separate themselves, reducing the risk of infection. Perhaps the best-known decision was to quarantine the entire village to prevent further spread of the disease. The plague raged in the village for 14 months and it is stated that it killed at least 260 villagers with only 83 villagers surviving out of a population of 350. This figure has been challenged on a number of occasions with alternative figures of 430 survivors from a population of around 800 being given.
When the first outsiders visited Eyam a year later, they found that fewer than a quarter of the village had survived the plague. Survival appeared random, as many plague survivors had close contact with the bacterium but never caught the disease. For example, Elizabeth Hancock never became ill despite burying six children and her husband in eight days (the graves are known as the Riley graves). The unofficial village gravedigger Marshall Howe also survived, despite handling many infected bodies, as he had earlier survived catching the disease.
Records
Type |
Ancient Parish |
Civil Jurisdictions |
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High Peake |
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Bakewell |
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Bakewell |
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Records begin |
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Parish registers: 1630 |
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Bishop's Transcripts: 1662 |
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Ecclesiastical Jurisdictions |
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Eyam |
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Legal Jurisdictions |
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Location of Archive |
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Church Records
Eyam parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials have online indexes by the following groups:
FS PR's = FamilySearch Parish Registers |
Eyam St Helen later St Lawrence (1630) Parish Online Records | ||||||
Baptisms | Marriages | Burials | ||||
Indexes | Images | Indexes | Images | Indexes | Images | |
FS PR's | NONE |
NONE |
1900-1912 |
NONE |
NONE |
NONE |
The Ancient parish includes townships of Eyam Woodlands with Grindleford and Foolow.
Derbyshire Record Office has deposited registers Bap 1630-1957 Mar 1630-1993 Burial 1630-1964 Banns 1754-1790, 1922-1964Record Office reference D 2602
Non-Conformist Churches
- Wesleyan Methodist
- Wesleyan Methodist Reform
Adjacent Parishes
Parishes within 5 miles are:
Stony Middleton (1.77 mi) Longstone (3.26 mi) Tideswell (3.49 mi) Hathersage (3.59 mi) Baslow (3.89 mi) Ashford (5.24 mi) Dore (5.27 mi) Holmesfield (5.32 mi) Castleton (5.4 mi) Edensor (5.67 mi) Chatsworth (5.86 mi) Fulwood (6.11 mi) Taddington (6.15 mi) King Sterndale (6.25 mi) Bakewell (6.48 mi) Derwent (7.09 mi) Bradfield (9.27 mi)
Sources
1. Family Search:https://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Eyam,_Derbyshire_Genealogy
2. Genuki ;http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/DBY/Eyam