The Tapestry in Eyam Museum recalling the brave and sacrificial story of the plague in 1665/1666
Patrick Comerford
Last week, as I was preparing my sermon for the Day of Pentecost [24 May 2015] in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, I found my mind wandering between Elam in remote Persia in Apostolic Days to Ilam in the Staffordshire Peaks and my wanderings there in my late teens in the early 1970s.
But in a conversation yesterday, someone confused picturesque Ilam (pronounced Eye-Lamb) in Staffordshire with the “plague village” of Eyam (pronounced Eem, to rhyme with seem), about 40 km further north in the Derbyshire Peaks.
I visited Eyam later in the 1970s while I was attending peace conferences at Swanwick and went on tours that also brought me to neighbouring places like Bakewell, Buxton, Chatsworth, Chesterfield and Matlock.
Years later, Eyam still tells a memorable tale from the 17th century of self-sacrifice and bravery that remains an outstanding and unique story of redemptive self-sacrifice. It is a story that I am often reminded of in Lichfield when I hear the story of Anna Seward and her poetry.
Eyam is a village in the Derbyshire Dales and in the Peak District. The village is noted for an outbreak of the plague in 1665, when the villagers chose to isolate themselves rather than let the infection spread.
Eyam was founded and named by Anglo-Saxons, although before that the Romans had mined lead in the area. Today, Eyam depends on the tourism and its reputation as “the plague village.”
Eyam was also badly affected by the Great Plague of 1665, although the plague is usually associated with London. The sacrifices made by the villages of Eyam is said to l have saved many places throughout the Midlands and northern England.
The Plague Cottage in Eyam (Photograph: Mickie Collins/Wikipedia)
At the time of the plague, Eyam had a population of about 350. The most important person in the village was the Rector, the Revd William Mompesson (1639-1709), who moved to Eyam with his wife Catherine and their children in 1664.
In the summer of 1665, the village tailor received a flea-infested bundle of cloth from his supplier in London. This parcel contained the fleas that caused the plague. Within a week, the tailor’s assistant, George Vicars, had died from the plague. More began dying in the household soon after; by the end of September, five more villagers had died; 23 died in October.
As the plague spread, the villagers turned to their rector and his predecessor, the Revd Thomas Stanley. When some villagers wanted to flee to Sheffield, Mompesson feared they would bring the plague with them and persuaded them to cut themselves off from the outside would.
From May 1666, precautious measures were introduced to slow the spread of the plague. Families buried their own dead and church services were moved to the natural amphitheatre at Cucklett Delph, allowing villagers to separate themselves and reduce the risk of infection.
The villagers voluntarily quarantined themselves although this would mean certain death for many of them. The village was supplied with food by people living outside who left supplies at the “plague stones” marking the boundary that separated Eyam from the outside world.
The villages left money in a water trough filled with vinegar to sterilise the coins. In this way, the people of Eyam were not left to starve to death, and the people who supplied the village with food did not come into contact with the plague.
Eyam continued to suffer from the plague throughout 1666. William Mompesson had to bury his own family in the churchyard. When his wife died in August 1666, he decided to hold her services outdoors to reduce the chances of people catching the disease.
By November 1666, the plague had come to an end. In all, 260 out of 350 villagers had died in Eyam. But their selfless sacrifice saved many thousands of lives in the north of England.
Mompesson survived. He wrote at the end of the ordeal: “Now, blessed be God, all our fears are over for none have died of the plague since the eleventh of October and the pest-houses have long been empty.”
The plague ran its course over 14 months but when it came to an end it had killed most of the villagers. The parish records provide the names of 273 people who were victims. Only 83 villages survived out of a population of over 350.
Those who survived did so randomly and there is no explanation for their survival. Many of the survivors had close contact with those who died yet never caught the disease. Elizabeth Hancock buried six children and her husband within eight days, but was never infected herself. The village gravedigger Marshall Howe survived even though he handled many infected bodies.
Every Plague Sunday a wreath is laid on Catherine Mompesson’s grave in the churchyard. Plague Sunday has been marked in Eyam since the bicentenary of the plague in 1866. It now takes place in Cucklett Delph on the last Sunday in August, at the same time as Wakes Week and the Well Dressing ceremonies.
Eyam Hall, built shortly after the plague (Photograph: Dave Pape/Wikipedia)
The Jacobean-style Eyam Hall was built by the Wright family in 1671, soon after the plague, and local mining helped Eyam to recover in population and to prosper economically. Today, many of the village houses and cottages are marked with plaques listing the names and ages of residents who died as victims of the plague, and the story of the plague village is told in Eyam Museum.
There is a plague window in the parish church. But Eyam and its church and churchyard are much older than the plague. The name of Eyam comes from Old English and first appears in the Domesday Book as Aium. The name probably means a cultivated island in the moors, although it may also refer to Eyam’s location between two brooks.
A Mercian-style Anglo-Saxon cross in the churchyard in Eyam dates back to the eighth century, and is covered in complex carvings. Saint Lawrence’s Church dates from the 14th century, but a Saxon font and Norman window are evidence of an earlier church on the site.
Some of the Rectors of Eyam had colourful stories. The Revd Sherland Adams was an ardent royalist, and was removed from office by the parliamentarians, although he returned again briefly in 1664 after the Caroline Restoration and the resignation of Adams.
The tithe from the lead mines was paid to the rectors, who received one penny for every dish of ore and 2¼d for every load of hillock-stuff. When a new rich vein was discovered in the 18th century, Eyam became a rich living.
Canon Thomas Seward (1708–1790) was Rector of Eyam for half a century from 1740 until his death in 1790, and his daughter, the poet Anna Seward, who was born in Eyam in 1747. While he was still Rector of Eyam, he moved with his family 90 km south to the Bishop’s Palace in the Cathedral Close in Lichfield in 1754, and became Prebendary of Pipa Parva in Lichfield Cathedral.
Although she was born in Eyam, Anna Seward became known as the “Swan of Lichfield.” She returned from Lichfield to Eyam in 1788 and her poem ‘Eyam’ is filled with nostalgia for her birthplace, tearfully recalling the story of the plague:
For one short week I leave, with anxious heart,
Source of my filial cares, the Full of Days,
Lur’d by the promise of Harmonic Art
To breathe her Handel’s soul-exalting lays.
Pensive I trace the Derwent’s amber wave,
Foaming through umbrag’d banks, or view it lave
The soft, romantic vallies, high o’er-peer’d
By hills and rocks, in savage grandeur rear’d.
Not two short miles from thee, can I refrain
Thy haunts, my native Eyam, long unseen? –
Thou and thy lov’d inhabitants, again
Shall meet my transient gaze. – Thy rocky screen,
Thy airy cliffs I mount; and seek thy shade,
Thy roofs, that brow the steep, romantic glade;
But, while on me the eyes of Friendship glow,
Swell my pain’d sighs, my tears spontaneous flow.
In scenes paternal, not beheld through years,
Nor view’d, till now, but by a Father’s side,
Well might the tender, tributary tears,
From keen regrets of duteous fondness glide!
Its pastor, to this human-flock no more
Shall the long flight of future days restore!
Distant he droops, – and that once gladdening eye
Now languid gleams, ’en when his friends are nigh.
Through this known walk, where weedy gravel lies,
Rough, and unsightly; – by the long, coarse grass
Of the once smooth, and vivid green, with sighs
To the deserted Rectory I pass; –
Stray through the darken’d chambers’ naked bound,
Where childhood’s earliest, liveliest bliss I found;
How chang’d, since erst, the lightsome walls beneath,
The social joys did their warm comforts breathe!
Ere yet I go, who may return no more,
That sacred pile, ’mid yonder shadowy trees,
Let me revisit! – Ancient, massy door,
Thou gratest hoarse! – my vital spirits freeze,
Passing the vacant pulpit, to the space
Where humble rails the decent altar grace,
And where my infant sister’s ashes sleep,
Whose loss I left the childish sport to weep.
The gloves, suspended by the garland’s side,
White as its snowy flowers, with ribbons tied; –
Dear Village, long these wreaths funereal spread,
Simple memorials of thy early dead!
But O! thou bland, and silent pulpit! – thou,
That with a Father’s precepts, just, and bland,
Did’st win my ear, as reason’s strength’ning glow
Show’d their full value, now thou seem’st to stand
Before my sad, suffus’d, and trembling gaze,
The dreariest relic of departed days.
Of eloquence paternal, nervous, clear,
Dim Apparition thou – and bitter is my tear!
25 May 2015
A walk along the coast at Malahide
and finding an unusual tower house
Hicks Tower looking down on the golden sands of Malahide this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)
Patrick Comerford
Today is the Day of Pentecost and I was preaching at the Cathedral Eucharist in Christ Church Cathedral, this morning.
Later, four of us went to lunch in Mexico to Rome, strolling through Temple Bar on our way there and back to the cathedral.
Later in the afternoon, two of us drove north to Portmarnock, intending to go for a walk on the long sandy beach there. But there was little or no space for parking and we were south of Robswall on the edges of Malahide before we found a place to park and to start our walk along the coast.
After a short time, the beautiful golden sand of Malahide was spreading out below us, with Hicks Tower looking down on the scene from its lofty perch on hillock above the road.
Hicks Tower, Malahide … built as a Martello Tower but converted into an Art-and-Crafts house by Frederick Hicks over 100 years ago (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)
Hicks Tower looks like a small French chateau, but in fact is a former Martello tower, first built around 1805 and remodelled ca 1911 as an Arts-and-Crafts style detached house.
It takes its name from the architect Frederick Hicks (1870-1965), who redesigned the tower and made it his home. There are two storeys to the main tower block with two further storeys providing additional attic accommodation. The return and stair block are attached to the rear.
The tower has a conical roof there is and hipped roof to right with red clay tiles and concrete ridge tiles. The tower also has an iron weathervane. There are roughcast panelled chimney stacks, and the walls are roughcast.
This is one of the 74 Martello towers built in Ireland between 1804 and 1815 when the British Government feared a Napoleonic invasion of Ireland. The walls of Hicks Tower are 6 ft thick and the ground floor would have been used to store 30 barrels of gunpowder, cannon balls and water tanks with a capacity of 465 gallons.
The first floor provided the living and sleeping quarters for the soldiers while the top floor, with a parapet, held a 24 pounder cannon. The tower was built to be bomb-proof and the original entrance was 10 feet from the ground. The swivel gun on the parapet had a range of about a mile.
It is said only wooden pegs and no nails were used in its construction, in case a spark from a soldier’s boot would blow the tower asunder. The mortar, holding the granite blocks together, is exceptionally strong, made up of lime, ash, hot wax and ox-blood.
Hicks took over the tower in 1910 and, with colossal labour, he cut windows in the wall and added a roof as he converted it into his home.
I spy with my little eye … a surprising figure in the wall of Hicks Tower, Malahide (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)
The Dublin-based architect Frederick Hicks was born in Banbury, Oxfordshire, on 16 May 1870, the son of Joseph Hicks, a linen draper, and his wife Mary. He was educated at Taunton School and received his architectural training at the London Architectural Association School and Finsbury Technical College.
After completing his articles with John William Stevens of London at the age of 20, he moved to Dunlin in 1890 to take up a trial appointment in the office of James Rawson Carroll. He later worked with William Henry Byrne and with Thomas Drew before setting up his own practice in Dublin in 1895.
He was working from the same premises as Frederick Augustus Butler at 5 Saint Stephen’s Green in 1898 and at 28 South Frederick Street and 35a Kildare Street from 1900 until Butler’s death in 1903.
In 1905, Hicks formed partnership with Frederick Batchelor at 86 Merrion Square. The 17-year partnership of Batchelor and Hicks lasted until 1922, when Batchelor retired.
Hicks continued to work from the same premises until 1945, and he was President of the RIAI 1929-1931. As an accomplished artist, he exhibited frequently at exhibitions of the Water Colour Society of Ireland and the Royal Hibernian Academy from 1926 to 1963. When he retired in 1945, he sold his practice to his assistant Alan Hope.
Hicks died at his home at The Tower, Malahide, on 24 April 1965 shortly before his 95th birthday and was buried beside his wife and a daughter in the churchyard at Saint Andrew’s Church of Ireland parish church, Malahide.
No 86 Merrion Square, with its much-photographed front door is now the offices of GVA Donal O'Buachalla, where my father was once a director until his retirement.
No 86 Merrion Square, Dublin, where Hicks practised as an architect from 1905 to 1945 ((Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Hicks worked mainly on designing houses and on hospitals. As well as converting the Martello Tower into a house for himself around 1910, his other works include the Carnegie Free Library in Rathmines (1905-1913), the World War I memorial in All Saints’ Church, Grangegorman, Saint Thomas’s Church (1929-1932) in Cathal Brugha Street, off O’Connell Street, Dublin, now Saint George’s and Saint Thomas’s, and repairs to the stonework in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin (1946).
Some years ago, Hicks Tower was owned by the lifestyle ‘yoga guru’ and controversial businessman Tony Quinn, but I am not sure whether he still lives there.
We continued our walk along the beach and the coastline and the beach, with views back to Ireland’s Eye and Howth Head, and out to Lambay Island and Portrane Peninsula, watching the yachts and sail boats moving in and out of Malahide Harbour.
We stopped for double espressos at the Food Fayre and Café, where it was a pleasure to sit out in the warm sunshine and the open air, enjoying what appears to be the arrival of early summer, before retracing our steps past Hicks Tower and Robswall Castle.
Walking back along the coastline in Malahide this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)
Patrick Comerford
Today is the Day of Pentecost and I was preaching at the Cathedral Eucharist in Christ Church Cathedral, this morning.
Later, four of us went to lunch in Mexico to Rome, strolling through Temple Bar on our way there and back to the cathedral.
Later in the afternoon, two of us drove north to Portmarnock, intending to go for a walk on the long sandy beach there. But there was little or no space for parking and we were south of Robswall on the edges of Malahide before we found a place to park and to start our walk along the coast.
After a short time, the beautiful golden sand of Malahide was spreading out below us, with Hicks Tower looking down on the scene from its lofty perch on hillock above the road.
Hicks Tower, Malahide … built as a Martello Tower but converted into an Art-and-Crafts house by Frederick Hicks over 100 years ago (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)
Hicks Tower looks like a small French chateau, but in fact is a former Martello tower, first built around 1805 and remodelled ca 1911 as an Arts-and-Crafts style detached house.
It takes its name from the architect Frederick Hicks (1870-1965), who redesigned the tower and made it his home. There are two storeys to the main tower block with two further storeys providing additional attic accommodation. The return and stair block are attached to the rear.
The tower has a conical roof there is and hipped roof to right with red clay tiles and concrete ridge tiles. The tower also has an iron weathervane. There are roughcast panelled chimney stacks, and the walls are roughcast.
This is one of the 74 Martello towers built in Ireland between 1804 and 1815 when the British Government feared a Napoleonic invasion of Ireland. The walls of Hicks Tower are 6 ft thick and the ground floor would have been used to store 30 barrels of gunpowder, cannon balls and water tanks with a capacity of 465 gallons.
The first floor provided the living and sleeping quarters for the soldiers while the top floor, with a parapet, held a 24 pounder cannon. The tower was built to be bomb-proof and the original entrance was 10 feet from the ground. The swivel gun on the parapet had a range of about a mile.
It is said only wooden pegs and no nails were used in its construction, in case a spark from a soldier’s boot would blow the tower asunder. The mortar, holding the granite blocks together, is exceptionally strong, made up of lime, ash, hot wax and ox-blood.
Hicks took over the tower in 1910 and, with colossal labour, he cut windows in the wall and added a roof as he converted it into his home.
I spy with my little eye … a surprising figure in the wall of Hicks Tower, Malahide (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)
The Dublin-based architect Frederick Hicks was born in Banbury, Oxfordshire, on 16 May 1870, the son of Joseph Hicks, a linen draper, and his wife Mary. He was educated at Taunton School and received his architectural training at the London Architectural Association School and Finsbury Technical College.
After completing his articles with John William Stevens of London at the age of 20, he moved to Dunlin in 1890 to take up a trial appointment in the office of James Rawson Carroll. He later worked with William Henry Byrne and with Thomas Drew before setting up his own practice in Dublin in 1895.
He was working from the same premises as Frederick Augustus Butler at 5 Saint Stephen’s Green in 1898 and at 28 South Frederick Street and 35a Kildare Street from 1900 until Butler’s death in 1903.
In 1905, Hicks formed partnership with Frederick Batchelor at 86 Merrion Square. The 17-year partnership of Batchelor and Hicks lasted until 1922, when Batchelor retired.
Hicks continued to work from the same premises until 1945, and he was President of the RIAI 1929-1931. As an accomplished artist, he exhibited frequently at exhibitions of the Water Colour Society of Ireland and the Royal Hibernian Academy from 1926 to 1963. When he retired in 1945, he sold his practice to his assistant Alan Hope.
Hicks died at his home at The Tower, Malahide, on 24 April 1965 shortly before his 95th birthday and was buried beside his wife and a daughter in the churchyard at Saint Andrew’s Church of Ireland parish church, Malahide.
No 86 Merrion Square, with its much-photographed front door is now the offices of GVA Donal O'Buachalla, where my father was once a director until his retirement.
No 86 Merrion Square, Dublin, where Hicks practised as an architect from 1905 to 1945 ((Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Hicks worked mainly on designing houses and on hospitals. As well as converting the Martello Tower into a house for himself around 1910, his other works include the Carnegie Free Library in Rathmines (1905-1913), the World War I memorial in All Saints’ Church, Grangegorman, Saint Thomas’s Church (1929-1932) in Cathal Brugha Street, off O’Connell Street, Dublin, now Saint George’s and Saint Thomas’s, and repairs to the stonework in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin (1946).
Some years ago, Hicks Tower was owned by the lifestyle ‘yoga guru’ and controversial businessman Tony Quinn, but I am not sure whether he still lives there.
We continued our walk along the beach and the coastline and the beach, with views back to Ireland’s Eye and Howth Head, and out to Lambay Island and Portrane Peninsula, watching the yachts and sail boats moving in and out of Malahide Harbour.
We stopped for double espressos at the Food Fayre and Café, where it was a pleasure to sit out in the warm sunshine and the open air, enjoying what appears to be the arrival of early summer, before retracing our steps past Hicks Tower and Robswall Castle.
Walking back along the coastline in Malahide this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)
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