Black Death Trotting on ‘The Devil s Hoof’
The Great Plague lasted from the beginning of 1665 until September 1666, representing the last major epidemic of the bubonic plague to occur in England, killing an estimated 200,000 (one quarter of London s population). Fatalities soared in the city of London in part because Londoners failed to self-quarantine, but this was not the case in the rural English village of Eyam located idyllically in the Derbyshire Dales within the Peak District National Park.
An early nineteenth-century scene showing the Eyam village pond, plague cottages, church tower, Talbot Inn and cottages, rectory gateposts and four groups of figures. (