Eyam 4.58

Eyam is an English village and civil parish in the Derbyshire Dales district that lies within the Peak District National Park. The population of the civil parish at the 2001 Census was 926 increasing to 969 at the 2011 Census. The village is noted for an outbreak of bubonic plague which occurred there in 1665, in which the villagers chose to isolate themselves rather than let the infection spread. The present village was founded and named by Anglo-Saxons, although lead had been mined in the area by the Romans. Formerly industrial, its economy now relies on the tourist trade and it is promoted as 'the plague village'.HistoryLead mining seems to have had a continuous history in the Eyam district since at least the Roman era and there is evidence of habitation from earlier. Stone circles and earth barrows on the moors above the present village have largely been destroyed, although some remain and more are recorded. The most notable site is the Wet Withens stone circle on Eyam Moor. Coins bearing the names of many emperors provide evidence of Roman lead-mining locally. However, the village's name derives from Old English and is first recorded in the Domesday Book as Aium. It is a dative form of the noun ēg (an island) and probably refers to a patch of cultivable land amidst the moors, or else to the settlement's situation between two brooks.In the churchyard is an Anglo-Saxon cross in Mercian style dated to the 8th century, moved there from its original location beside a moorland cart track. Grade I listed and a Scheduled Ancient Monument, it is covered in complex carvings and is almost complete, but for a missing section of the shaft.