Eyam, Derbyshire Genealogy

England Derbyshire  Derbyshire Parishes  Eyam

Parish History
Eyam is an Ancient Parish in the county of Derbyshire. Other places in the parish include: Eyam Woodland, Eyam Woodlands, Foolow, and Woodland Eyam.

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, 1426 inhabitants, of whom 951 are in the township of Eyam, 1 mile (N. W. by W.) from Stony-Middleton. This parish comprises by measurement 4398 acres, of which about 320 are arable, 708 meadow, 3270 pasture and moor, and about 100 wood: the soil is various, partly on limestone and partly on freestone; much of the pasture and meadow is very good, but the moor and higher land is poor. In Sept. and Oct. 1665, the infection having been conveyed hither in a package from London, four-fifths of the inhabitants were carried off by the plague. The living is a rectory, valued in the king's books at £13. 15. 5., and in the gift of the Dukes of Devonshire and Buckingham, and the Earl of Thanet, with a net income of £226: the tithes have been commuted for £80, and the glebe consists of 56 acres, with a house. The church contains about 560 sittings. There is a place of worship for Wesleyans; and a school is endowed with about £12 per annum. Ann Seward, poetess, and writer of a life of Dr. Darwin, was a native of Eyam, of which her father was rector.

From: A Topographical Dictionary of England (1848), pp. 195-206. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=50953 Date accessed: 05 April 2011.

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.

Civil Registration
Birth, marriages and deaths were kept by the government, from July 1837 to the present day. The civil registration article tells more about these records. There are several Internet sites with name lists or indexes. A popular site is FreeBMD.

Church records
To find the names of the neighbouring parishes, use Jurisdictions 1851. In this site, search for the name of the parish, click on the location "pin", click Options and click List contiguous parishes.

Contributor: Include here information for parish registers, Bishop’s Transcripts and other types of church records, such as parish chest records. Add the contact information for the office holding the original records. Add links to the Family History Library Catalog showing the film numbers in their collection

Census records
Contributor: Include an overview if there is any unique information, such as the census for X year was destroyed. Add a link to online sites for indexes and/or images. Also add a link to the Family History Library Catalog showing the film numbers in their collection.

Poor Law Unions
Bakewell Poor Law Union, Derbyshire

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Derbyshire Probate Records to find the name of the court having primary jurisdiction. Scroll down in the article to the section Court Jurisdictions by Parish.

Maps and Gazetteers
Maps are a visual look at the locations in England. Gazetteers contain brief summaries about a place.


 * England Jurisdictions 1851
 * Vision of Britain

Web sites
Contributor: Add any relevant sites that aren’t mentioned above.