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"ITS CHARACTER SHALL NOT BE DESTROYED": NARRATIVE, HERITAGE, AND TOURISM IN THE PLAGUE VILLAGE
DISSERTATION
Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of
The Ohio State University
By
Christopher W. Antonsen, M.A.
*****
The Ohio State University 2001
Dissertation Committee:
Professor Patrick B. M ullen, A dviser Approved by
Professor Amy E. Shuman
Professor Nicholas Howe A dviser
Department of English UMI Number: 3022437
UMI
UMI Microform 3022437 Copyright 2001 by Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.
Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Copyright by Christopher W. Antonsen 2001 ABSTRACT
Eyam is a historic village in the English North Midlands, famous because it was the site of a great outbreak of plague in 1665-1666. When the plague hit, the villagers ultimately agreed to quarantine themselves within a specific boundary around Eyam in order to prevent the spread of plague to neighboring areas. The village was saved although as many as 1/3 of the population died before the plague ended. Today, Eyam is one of the most-visited tourist sites in the Peak District, the world's busiest national park
(22,000,000 visitors in 1996). The community—still populated by the descendants of the plague's victims and survivors—is undergoing rapid changes due largely to economic and social factors related to tourism and suburban migrations from large cities nearby.
Historically, Eyam has been a laborer's zmd agricultural community, and local incomes cannot measure up against those of wealthier "newcomers" who wish to move into the village and enjoy its specific historical appeal. Consequently, the village is being depopulated and repopulated while community change is mediated by several outside forces: national and county planning regulations, the Peak District's own planning restrictions, and the natural forces of local respresentation managed for consumption by tourists who arrive with very narrow and specific expectations. Altogether, this has created an unhappy situation in Eyam. Opinions—though strong—vary significantly, polarized around the opposing beliefs that (a) tourist cash can reinvigorate what was really a withering village and (b) economic and social forces exerted mostly through
"heritage tourism" are killing a community that had survived for centuries before outside priorities were favored over local needs.
ii This folkloristic study is based on archival and public documents as well as ethnographic fieldwork in the village conducted on several occasions during a five-year period. It examines Eyam's current perceived crisis as a case study how community is interpreted in the context of heritage tourism, suburbanization, and a vast and powerful public and private planning and development structure.
m For Tristan and Tobias, oiir tioo precious cups of Sweet T
IV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
From the Edge of the Plate
My father in-law really enjoys a good piece of pie. The sweeter, the better. His first stroke with the fork is always to cut a small triangular portion off the tip of the slice and push it to the edge of the plate. Then he eats the rest of the slice, crust and all, and returns to the little piece stored away—called his "quittin' bite"—to savor the pie's sweetest, most prized mouthful. On many lovely summer evenings or cozy winter days when I was cooped up in a small room drafting this dissertation, I looked forward to the day when I could write the acknowledgements. It was a treat I reserved for myself to enjoy entirely at the end. And so, writing the acknowledgments is at long last before me, m y qidttin' bite to savor as I please.
First I must recognize the friendship, guidance, and other contributions given freely to me by my friends and acquaintances in Eyam. I can happily say that my study of Eyam could not have been so fruitful and enjoyable had it not been for young people like Kelly Davies and Joanna R. I wish them both luck as they finish school and university, respectfully, and hope they will find enjoyable time to spend in Eyam as they grow older. The Blackwells, particularly Peter and Geoff, are very im portant to Eyam, especially its thriving and changing traditional hie. To Geoff I wish continued success with the much-anticipated and enjoyed Geoff Blackwell Quiz during Carnival, and to
Peter I offer my humblest gratitude for permitting me the honor of helping to prepare his
25th and final Eyam wells-dressing. Thanks to Peter, I can proudly say I know what zuells-dresser's back and wells-dresser's sqidnt are—maladies that, were it not for the honor. would not be commendable at all! Others in the village have my thanks for
conversations, long and short, and for friendship: Lynn Streyer and Dr. Streyer, Evelyn
and John Lomas, Charles and Maureen Maltby, Joan Plant, Roy White, John and Mrs.
Davies, Nancy, the "Teacup Ladies," and Gareth at the Barrel Inn in Bretton. To still
other Eyam friends I owe an additional debt of gratitude, for these are folks who took
time to speak with me and answer questions about the village, either on or off tape:
Miss Clarice White, Susan (pseudonym), David Shaw, John Clifford, Francine Clifford,
Stephanie Lowe, Andrew Lowe, Granville Lowe, Meirlys Lewis, David Lewis, and
Maureen Maltby. Their words and voices are a pleasure to hear when I return to my
tape recordings, and I am thoroughly indebted for their assistance.
Finally, in Eyam, I owe special thanks and credit for the cooperation and lasting
friendship and warmth afforded me by the Cliffords, the Lewises, and especially the
entire Lowe family. To John and Francine Clifford, I send a copy of this complete work,
in honor of their contributions to Eyam's memory and modem presentation as well as my personal gratitude for their friendship, collegial spirit, and hard-earned, valuable knowledge of Eyam itself. To Meirlys and David Lewis I offer my sincerest appreciation of the extra effort and consideration they gave me when all they knew was that I was an
American with little money who wanted to come and stay in Eyam while I studied it for a research project. Their bed and breakfast—their home—was every bit home for me, full of comfort, security, warmth, and the daily pleasure of returning there to find familiar and happy people to sit and chat with. In a very tangible way, their generosity and extra accommodations made this dissertation possible. And I cannot convey enough of my personal devotion and affection for the Lowe family: Stephanie,
Granville, Andrew, Mark, Jeanette, Josh, and Dawn. Theirs were the first and most enduring welcoming arms for me in the village and I feel as though I have family there whenever I think of them. Whether I was driving Andrew to a bus stop in Chesterfield,
VI helping Mark and Andrew and Uncle Chris to baste the roasted sheep and toast
oatcakes during Carnival, admiring the beautiful polished steel flower holder at
Grandmother's grave site with Granvüle, or meeting up with Stephanie and others by
accident in the village, I knew I had a family there. Their generosity went even beyond
time and effort. I believe they even sacrificed some for me, in having me out to dinner
with the family, in sending an authentic Manchester United jersey home to my wife right
out of the closet, and in insisting that I take and keep Granville's and Stephanie's hand
made polished steel fruit dish (which is on our kitchen counter still today). I admire
their spirit and hope to deserve their continued friendship in years to come: I've grown
right fotid of ye.
Thanks to the Ohio State University Graduate School for awarding me a 1997
GSARA scholarship with travel funding. Without that support, I could not have undertaken this rewarding fieldwork project. Thanks also to the University of Sheffield
Centre for English Cultural Tradition and Language and John Widdowson in particular for granting me the Honorary Visiting Fellow award in 1997 and opening the Centre for my use while 1 was in England. These are great honors that gave with them tangible benefits that were critical to my success.
I gratefully acknowledge my former professors and the Folk Studies Program at
Western Kentucky University. Their training proved extremely helpful when I came to the OSU Ph.D. program. The adjustment to doctoral work was strenuous in some ways, but I felt that I had at least some practiced expertise already in grant writing, fieldwork, and understanding the nature of folklore and folklore studies in general. Michael Ann
Williams, Cam CoUins, Erika Brady, and Lynwood MonteU run a terrific program, and I am proud to have earned the degree.
I wish to offer a two counts of special thanks to Larry Danielson. It was his
Urban Folklore class that I took—mostly on a whim—at the University of Illinois in 1986
VÜ that hooked me on the field of folklore. I took every class from him that 1 could. It's great for me that I am not even the only Danielson-trained folklorist in my immediate family: my wife Robin and her brother David Lewman also took folklore classes taught by Larry. It is no coincidence either that each of us, like all of Larry's students, carry a deep and abiding personal affection and respect for him. He introduces the study of folklore as an intellectually challenging. Lively, relevant, and m ultifaceted profession.
The second count of thanks I owe Larry comes with congratulations—on his retirement.
Congratulations on a long, wonderful, and respected career. Thanks also for the timing of his retirement: for it is his position, in a way, that I will try to fill at WKU. I will taike up some of his teaching load, but I as much as anyone know that I can never take his place.
To my fellow folklore students and friends here at OSU—Phyl Cole Dai, Larry
Doyle, Jim Scarff, Rosemary Hathaway, Tim Lundgren, Ruth Stavely Bolzenius, Pam
Ensinger-Antos, and the rest—I say thanks for a great time, a wonderful community of friends and young scholars willing and eager to investigate and argue about what was new and important to us at any given time. Thanks for showing again why folklore (and folklorists) is so fun.
A major piece of wisdom that came to me early on in my graduate program here at Ohio State is that a major step toward success is in the smart composition of one's committees, for the general exams and for the dissertation. I am fortunate enough to have formed both committees with scholars and teachers of the highest reputations in their fields and who also lavished on me just the right amount of interest, encouragement, and constructive criticism. Although I never had the pleasure of taking a folklore class from him, Dan Bames has been present at every defining moment in my
Ph D. work: as a generals advisor, as an advocate for my enrolling in the highly fortuitous summer folklore program at the University of Sheffield, and as a committee
vm member while I address the generals exam requirement again now. His immense capacity for language, humor. Literary associations, music, and outright kindness have been comforting and admirable at the same time, and I hope—as always—to be at least within a half-step of the next joke he throws out. Nick Howe, who joined my committee at the dissertation stage, came on as an unknown to me in some ways. I had already made his acquaintance, knew of his international reputation as a scholar, and had heard from fellow students that he is a strong and yet sympathetic advisor. Having him on my committee was a terrific choice in that he contributed some of his vast expertise in the literatures and cultures of earlier periods in England and Europe and his interests in travel literature—both of which 1 now realize are critical areas of knowledge for the study of a place such as Eyam. I also thank Nick for meeting my specific study with obvious interest and curiosity, using shared interest to temper my awe concerning his reputation and bringing me to a point where I value his friendship in addition to his contributions as a member of my committee. I thank Amy Shuman today for transferring some of her interests and insights to me. She taught me to be concerned with highly problematic zmd ubiquitous matters of representation, presentation, authenticity, and other concepts that I consider to be absolutely central to and the pride and promise of folklore studies for the future. I also feel as though I will need to send Amy zmother note of thanks in three to foiu years, for it has become apparent that it can take me that long to finally digest some of the new ideas she presents. 1 thank Amy for her consistent and energetic support and especially for her contributions to my own overall worldview. To
Pat Mullen, the director of my dissertation and patriarch of my Ph.D., I can only try to convey the breadth of ways he has influenced me. He has been a firm and guiding hand as I continued to make myself into a folklorist who could not only recognize matters of interest but could go get them (so to speak) and share their importance with others. Pat
IX offers the true example of how to be reflexive without being self-conscious, how to handle difficult social matters with diplomacy and an unwavering hand, how to be a
shepherd without interfering, and how to work hard at something and make it finally pay off- As one of my fellow students at OSU observed, "Pat Mullen is the only person
I know who manages to make being a professor into a 9-5 job." His dedication, foUow-
through, knowledge and professionalism, and genuine personal interest are traits that I hope to embody as I continue to grow as a folklorist. I offer my deep and lasting gratitude to each member of my committee for their guidance, support, and friendship.
To two people who helped me get this started—Paul Smith and Gillian
Bennett—I want to say "Look! I finished it!" Paul and Gillian were professors and directors of the University of Sheffield/Memorial University of Newfoundland summer folklore institute in which I participated. While at the summer institute, 1 learned of
Eyam and became interested in studying it at greater length. They were there to listen to my excited descriptions when I returned from my first day of fieldwork in the village, emd I know that they are not far away now as I send them my excited peals that the dissertation (draft) is completed. Gillian offered me candid, grounding, and very useful perspectives on Eyam as an English community and has remained in contact with me throughout the development of this research. Her expertise in folklore and also her thorough acquaintance with Derbyshire traditions such as weUs-dressing helped immensely. If this were a chctmpionship game, Paul Smith would deserve the game ball.
Even in times when I doubted myself to the point of nearly giving up, Paul seemed to have an intuition that 1 needed a boost. On a fairly regular basis over the past four years, I have found small packages from Paul waiting for me. Inside I would usually find brochures, guides, photocopies of entire books, and other materials that related to
Eyam and its plague history, fri Paul 1 know 1 have a comrade enthusiast for Eyam and the area. His personal interest, notable effort, and consistent thoughtfulness on my
behalf did not go unnoticed or unappreciated. 1 hope he wül accept the fact that I
finished the dissertation as one small token of my appreciation. And of course to Beryl
Moore, the assistant at the Centre who twice insisted that 1 should go visit Eyam. An
enormous debt of gratitude goes to her providing a bona fide example of how a small
kindness can become a life-altering event.
Last and most, I thank my family. My parents in-law, Stan and Beverly
Lewman, have always supported me kindly and without demand. I am sure it must
have been difficult at times keeping mum about what their daughter's husband might
finally end up doing for a living. Funny, but I actually appreciate Beverly's playful habit
of laughing immediately before answering "He's a folklorist" whenever someone asked her what 1 do. It reminds me how lucky I am to be able to make a living at something
that I can also have a sense of humor about.
To my sister Ingrid Antonsen (M.D.) and her husband Bill Peterson (Ph.D.) I offer gratitude for their support and my continuing amazement at the ease with which they make being smart, hard-working, kind, and loving all at the same time look so easy.
To BÜ1, my new fellow conspirator, 1 pledge 1 will mthlessly join him amd sway the precarious generational balance in the feunily to the side of "educated doctor."
To my parents, Elmer and Hannelore Antonsen, I cannot even begin expressing what I need to say. In truth, it wül take a Hfetime effort at trying to do for others what they have done for me. Only then might I begin to show my gratitude and awe for their accomplishments, generosity, humor, and steadfast resolve to see deserving others meet their own successes. They have said that 1 will be even more satisfied in ten years that 1 have finished this. Perhaps, but they should understand how thrilled I am to get to shcire this accomplishment with them here and now. I got my paper done. Pop. 1 didn't have time to write anything shorter.
xi And to my dear wife Robin, who never—truly never—showed doubt that I would complete this project, I can only say I love you and thank you for the kind of love, support, and friendship that are thoroughly above question. They really, truly made this dissertation project work.
XU VITA
April 27, 1966 ...... Bom - Iowa City, Iowa
1988 ...... B.A. English, University of Illinois
1 9 9 1...... MA. Folk Studies, Western Kentucky University
1991 - 1995 ...... Graduate Research Associate Foreign Language Center The Ohio State University
1992 - 1993 ...... Graduate Administrative Associate Center for Folklore Studies The Ohio State University
1993 - 1995 ...... Graduate Teaching Associate Department of English The Ohio State University
PUBLICATIONS
Research Publication
1. C hristopher A ntonsen. 1998. "A m brose Bierce." Encyclopedia of Folklore and Literature, ed. Bruce Rosenberg. New York: ABC CLIO.
2. Christopher Antonsen. 1996. "Surprised by the Nature of the Surprise: Presenting FoUdofe Workshops in Schools." Folklore in Use 3(l):72-78.
3. C hristopher Antonsen. 1994. Review of Creative Ethnicity: Symbols and Strategies of Ethnic Life, ed. Stephen Stem and John Alan Cicala. Logan: University of Utah Press. Review appears in Journal of American Folklore 107(424):329-331.
xm FIELDS OF STUDY
Major Field: English
XIV TABLE OF CONTENTS
A bstract ...... ii
D ed icatio n ...... iv
Acknowledgments ...... v
V i t a ...... xiii
List of Figures...... xvü
P reface...... xvüi
Chapters:
1. Studying C ultural Change in a Historic Com m unity Site: Introduction and Key Terms ...... 1
Eyam's Community Predicament—A Simple Matter of Heritage? ...... 1 Fieldwork M ethodology ...... 4 Chapters in This Study ...... 8 Key Terms and Definitions ...... 10
2. Social, Medical, and Religious Implications of the Plague in England and Europe ...... 37
Biology of the Bubonic Plague ...... 39 Plague in E u ro p e ...... 44 Preventive Measures and the Generation of Public Health Systems in Europe ...... 49 Plague in England ...... 56 The Plague, the Anglican Chruch, and Lasting Changes in English Life .... 60
XV 3. Eyam's Symbolic Landscape ...... 68
The Purported Immutabüity of O bjects ...... 68 Eyam Village ...... 72 Town End to Town Head ...... 79 Eyam in the 17th Century ...... 82
4. Eyam's Plague Narrative ...... 86
Eyam Plague Literature ...... 87 Willicim Wood zmd The History and Antiquities of Eyam ...... 103 The Influence of Wood's History on Subsequent Eyam Plague Literature . . 124
5. "Particular Views"; Development Controls that Have an Impact on Eyam ...... 130
Layers of Preservation ...... 136 Early Organized and Grassroots Preservation Activities in England .... 136 The United Nations and the Emergence of a Formal Cultural Heritage Protection System ...... 138 A New High Ground for Contested Realms ...... 145 Trickle-Down and Ripples: Planning and Preservation in the UK ...... 150 Major United Kingdom Planning Authorities ...... 151 The Peak District National Park: "Not Ours, But Ours to Look After" .. 163
6. "They Are Determined Its Character Shall Not Be Destroyed": Local Responses to Change and Heritage Conservation in Eyam ...... 181
Cultural Change and the Principle of Cultural Conservation ...... 183 Who Represents Eyam? ...... 193 My Minerva Experience ...... 215 "They Are Determined That Its Character Shall Not Be Destroyed" 226
7. C onclusion ...... 230
Bibliography ...... 235
XVI UST OF HGURES
Figure Page
1 Entering Eyam from Town End ...... xix
2 Table of contents in The History and Antiquities of Eyam, second ed ...... 112
3 A comparison of topics that appear in Hoare's and Woods' works ...... 126
4 Selected organizations that directly or indirectly shape development and planning policies that have an impact on Eyam ...... 153
5 The Peak District National Park is situated in the English North Midlands, covering approximately 555 square m iles ...... 165
6 Eyam is located one rrüle away from the nearest substantial transportation r o u t e ...... 166
7 Eyam Hall e x te r io r ...... 200
8 Eyam's "Plague Cottages" on Church Street...... 212
xvu PREFACE
The villagers are determined that it's character shall not be destroyed.
I first heard this phrase when I visited Eyam in the summer of 1992. I was a student in the International Summer Folklore Program hosted jointly by the University of
Sheffield's Centre for English Cultural Traditions and Language and Memorial
University of Newfoundland's Department of Folklore. One of just six student participants, I was delighted to test my growing folklore skills and knowledge in the cultural surroundings of England. The summer program consisted of two official courses: Foodways of the British Isles (taught by Paul Smith) and Folklore of the English
Parish Church (taught by Cillian Bennett). Both folklorists are internationally known leaders in their areas of expertise, and they introduced us to an eye-popping variety of folk groups, traditions, and behaviors. They worked us very hard too. Gillian's course demanded that we take day-long field trips once each week to visit examples of parish churches that were especially interesting architecturally, culturally, materially, socially, in terms of preservation, or for still other reasons. We travelled as far as Lavenham in
Devonshire and London where we toured more than a half-dozen Christopher Wren churches in one gruelling day.
Our home base of sorts during the normal day in Sheffield was the seminar room at the Centre where we could cool off, review archive materials, and hope to run across other folklorists with whom to compare notes, share anecdotes, or just catch our breath together. One day, perhaps halfway through the two-month program. Centre
xvüi secretary Ber}4 Moore approached me quite directly and with noticeable purpose. "Have you heard of the Plague Village?" she asked me. "Have you heard of Eyam? It's spelled E-y-a-m, but it's pronounced eem." No, I told her, I had not. Beryl m entioned something about the village, its minister, and the plague, but I was overwhelmed at the time with some other concern and did not pay it too much attention.
A few days or maybe a week later. Beryl approached me again. This time I paid closer attention and what she described sounded interesting, even though I was a bit confused over being taken aside as I was and given this information. That weekend I ventured to the transport station and purchased a bus ticket that would take me to
Eyam and back, some eleven miles out into the Peak District National Park. I made my way there with a tape recorder, camera, and note pad in a small backpack and an open mind, not really having the slightest idea what to expect. No matter what, I figured, it should at least be a fun day exploring on my own.
C V U l& l n y
Figure 1. Entering Eyam from Town End (photo by C. Antonsen)
XIX I arrived in Eyam around mid-moming and stepped out onto its curious and
small triangular "square." Fieldwork experience quickly transforms into habit, so I did
what I had already been trained to do since I arriving in England: I looked for the
church. Not far along the street, I found it. Small and appealing, it stood partly
obscured by old, thick trees that almost completely shaded the churchyard. Its
construction was of a brownish, almost rusty-colored gritstone stained with dark black
streaks from weather and the elements. I noticed the atmospheric graveyard. My
immediate impression was that it was the gloomiest and most densely filled of aU of the
church yards I had seen on field trips with Gillian Bennett.
Inside the church I took some time to notice architectural features that hinted at construction dates as well as dozens of other elements that could give me clues about
the church's history or even present-day use. Although Anglican parish churches are houses of worship, it is not out of the ordinary to find small museum displays, a book stall and trinket counter, and a church volunteer standing nearby to supervise and offer assistance as needed. The same is true for Eyam's church, but its display was the most extensive I had seen so far. Consisting of a dozen or so very professional-looking vertical panels (perhaps six feet high and three wide) with printed pictures, texts, and illustrations, this display presented extensive information about Eyam's experience with the plague.
Still later that day I conducted a handful of interviews, one with Reverend David
Shaw with whom I rejoined in 1997. In this first interview, he referred to the sort of lamentable cultural changes that I had read about in the works of other folklorists dealing with planning and cultural conservation. He referred to the pressures of tourism, preservation, and local culhue and proclaimed that through it all, the villagers "are determined that its character shall not be destroyed." Suddenly, in this place brought to my attention out of happenstance, I saw a treasure trove of issues, opportunities for
XX study, and perspectives to explore in this wonderful community and contested site.
That same day, I traversed the village, plotting my way according to one of the tourist
"plague maps" that illustrated artifacts and landscape sites of interest concerning the plague narrative. Deep down, I knew this would be the study for me. Finally, I selected it as my dissertation topic—perhaps one of the best and most personally reweurding decisions I have ever made.
XXI CHAPTER 1
STUDYING CULTURAL CHANGE IN A HISTORIC COMMUNITY SITE:
INTRODUCTION AND KEY TERMS
Eyam s Community Predicament—A Simple M atter of Heritage?
Eyam is a village of approximately 1,000 residents. This population has been amazingly stable for almost all of the village's recorded history, stretching back as far as the eleventh century when it was mentioned in the Domesday Book. By some standards, the village had not changed drastically in its first 900 years. It has always been situated in a crooked valley well within the wild and bleak surroundings of dark heather moors and craggy white peaks. Its populations have seen Saxons, Romans, Normans, Vüdngs, and others come and go. The local economy has been steady yet flexible, surviving through lean periods when through-trade was a trickle and prospering when lead rnining brought wealth and power into the area. Farming and quarrying have seen the villagers through just about aU periods anyway. Eyam even weathered a gruesome, devastating, and now famous episode with the bubonic plague in the seventeenth century. But today there is a sensation of crisis in the village, one that many expect to be the death of Eyam as they know it, an utter transformation that places it onto an entirely new cultural road than the one straddled for the past millennimn. The accused agent of this transformation is tourism, specifically tourism as encouraged and fomented by the Peak
District National Park and other development planning organizations. It is the economic shift to a tourist service economy wrought by an unstaunched and overburdening flow of visitors in Eyam that is believed to be transforming Eyam from a local community with a history into some sort of empty historical site with no real community anymore.
Eyam vernacular has a specific formula, oft repeated and well known, for what constitutes the difference between locals and newcomers. Locals, they say, are bom in
Eyam or have lived here for more than thirty years. Newcomers, thus, are everyone else.
Newcomers are the localized extension of tourists, and are generally characterized negatively in common parlance. They come from bigger cities—often as childless retirees.
They have more money than the typical locals and, through competitive housing economies, end up pushing poorer locals out. They often stay only for part of the year, turning Eyam into a holiday resort for newcomers who don't join in and contribute to the local community in traditionally expected ways. They view Eyam as a display piece, a historically interesting curio and stand in the way of change that might disrupt this illusion. And so forth.
During the day—any day, but especially in late summer—Eyam is beset by a swarm of tourists. In the opinions of many of the locals, they are Eyam's present-day plague, a collective harbinger of another very real threat to the village. In an interesting and immediate sense, they may be absolutely correct. To appreciate the village's situation, you m ust first understand that Eyam is located in the heart of the Peak
District National Park, England's oldest and largest national park, established in 1951.
Forget what you know an American national park to be like. English parks planners didn't have the luxury of open wüdemess from which to Ccirve vast undeveloped territories for public stewardship. The English park's land is not owned by the park. In fact almost all of the land in the Peak Park is privately owned—as farms or even individual homes and gardens—as it has been since the Enclosures Act. (Imagine it like drawing an arbitrary boundary around a large number of towns and villages in the densely populated American Northeast today zmd designating it and most of its contents a national park.) What had once been an ordinary set of places mapped culturally according to locals' daily needs was instantly transformed into a national park with altogether different rules for access, presentation, and the use of space. It is a jarring experience and the Eyam residents know it well.
The Peak Park is the major local extension of a much larger and well coordinated public and private system of heritage preservation and development planning organizations, reaching all the way up to UK national government with international structures that support it. The Peak Park pursues a mission that combines the public's
"right to roam" with a dense and impossible set of conservation goals. Ironically, just as
Eyam established a cordon sanitaire to prevent contamination and contagion by plague
330 years ago, the Peak Park has cast its own boundary, actively encouraging the commutation of disproportionately large numbers of people in and out of the vicinity at a breathtaking pace. What the Peak Park's visitors come to see is a mixture of wild environment consisting mainly of high moors and river valleys and the built environment, or the local cultural heritage of towns and villages.
There is a definite and entrenched bias in English preservation and development policy—in the entire English heritage industry—toward the pastoral and the tangible, what Henry Glassie first referred to as "tenacious" artifacts in terms of American folk architecture back in the 1960s. Although the Park reser\'’es the right to define valued characteristics on a case by case basis for each locality in its jurisdiction, it clearly operates on the general view that naturzd and landscape (including architectural and archaeological) resources embody the Park's chief treasures and that maintaining public access to them is the primary mission.
Researching the roots of English preservation and cultiual heritage poHcies and their relationship with broader initiatives sponsored by the United Nations and
UNESCO, one can see how casting development policy and cultural preservation needs in terms of the tangible has been expedient. Unfortunately for community-centered
planning crises such as Eyam's, England has not had a watershed legislative directive
such as the American FoUdife Preservation Act (1976) that specifically mandates
consideration of intangible aspects of culture—foUdife, beliefs, behaviors, etc.—in
development policies. Instead, through the momentum of prevailing policies that
originated at least as early as the 19th century, English development and preservation
interests continue to focus primarily on the built and natural environments. There is no
provision that explicitly protects the needs of living commrmities. Thus a vülage such as
Eyam finds itself in something of a sticky position facing a heritage preservation system
that does not include the local cultural group in its definition of heritage.
In view of this, my dissertation is a study of how Eyam village is a historic site
with great tourist appeal owing to natural, structural, and cultural heritage features but
whose preservation is guarded and ensured by a system that relies on an inherently
flawed definition of heritage that, ultimately, fetishizes the natural and structural
environment while ignoring the living cultural environment that gives it contemporary
meaning.
Fieldwork Methodology
I conducted the major portion of my fieldwork in Eyam during the summer of
1997. As I mention in the Foreword, I had already been there in 1992 and begun
formulating ideas for how to study culture and change. As of 1997,1 was ready to
return to the village to gather more information and begin testing some of my h)/potheses
concerning how economic and culture dynamics were at work in Eyam. I received a
tremendously helpful Graduate School Alumni Research Award (travel grant) from The
Ohio State University to defray travel costs and some materials expenses associated with documentation. I also received an Honorary Visiting Fellowship from the University of Sheffield's Centre for English Cultural Tradition and Language which
provided me with a formal and very useful connection to an English academic authority
(it helped speed my passage through customs when I arrived in London too).
I had made advance arrangements to hire a car in London for the duration of my
stay since I knew I would need to move freely between Eyam, Sheffield, and other towns
for research purposes. Before I departed for England, I had also made reservations at
the only bed and breakfast in Eyam that I could locate: the Delf View Inn. That was
appealing to me for several reasons. The owners worked out a favorable rate since I would stay nearly a month (most of their visitors stayed one to two evenings). The house was located almost directly across from the church in Eyam, providing a great location from which to make my various documentary outings. As it turned out, my decision to lodge with Delf View hm could have cost me my credibility in Eyam with a certain group of locals whom I did eventually come to know quite well.
David and Meirlys Lewis own Delf View House, a large manor with its own local history and stature. David Lewis is a very successful restoration architect, earning a lot of money and working primarily out of his home studio to coordinate projects underway throughout Britain. Meirlys is the hostess for bed and breakfast guests, but she hires local people to tend to the linens, cleaning, and much of the yardwork and regular maintenance. Delf View House operates as a bed and breakfast only for a few weeks per year; otherwise it is the very private and grand home for the Lewises. The Lewises were not native to Eyam and had, as of 1997, lived there only seventeen years. In local vernacular, that qualified them still as newcomers (see chapter five). In addition, their wealth, and reputation (fairly earned or not, 1 still cannot comment) among some locals frequently placed them at odds with conservative community interests. Unwittingly, 1 had affiliated myself with them simply by lodging there. After 1 arrived, 1 discovered that there were at least two other bed and breakfast establishments in Eyam and two very small hotels above local pubs. Aware of the potential risk to my credibility, I nevertheless decided to stay where I was. If my simply lodging somewhere could be interpreted as problematic, then how would it look to ruffle feathers and cause further commotion by moving around too much? In the long run, I feel that I was not harmed at all. In fact, I am truly grateful for the kindness I realized the Lewises had shown me from the start. The room the rented to me was not one they normally offered; it was their eldest daughters who was away at university. They made me feel welcome and cared for when I was visibly worn out, when weather was bad, and when 1 received messages from abroad. When I left the village and settled my account with Meirlys, she had reduced the room charges even further and excused it on her account that I was "the perfect guest."
Another major reason for my success in Eyam was a friendship I struck up almost immediately upon arrival, with Stephanie Lowe at Delf View House. Stephanie is in her mid forties, was raised in Sheffield, and married Granvüle Lowe, a local bom
Eyamer and descendant of a long Une of Lowes on record since before the plague period.
She and Granville have three adult children: Andrew (21), Jeanette (23), and Mark (25).
All three children Uve in Eyam, Jeanette an unwed mother of one and expecting a second and Mark recently married to Dawn, a young woman from another village. The Lowes are not wealthy. Granville is a steel welder at a nearby factory and Stephanie works seasonally at Delf View House performing maid services and part time in similar jobs elsewhere in the village. On my second morning at Delf View House, still contending with jet lag and getting my bearings locally. I reaUzed that I had lost or forgotten to pack a critical pair of mini headphones that I would need for reviewing my tape recordings and so I was getting into my car to head out to Sheffield where I might purchase a set. Stephanie greeted me, chatted with me for a moment, and gave me advice to go to a specific store in Chesterfield, only a few miles further away along a different highway. Her advice was indeed helpful, and I began seeking her out in order
to make connections with her family and other locals. Before long, I had made the acquaintance of nearly two dozen of the Lowe's friends and family, many of whom proved to me compelling and valuable informants.
I went to England loaded down with eighty blank audio cassettes, fifty rolls of
35mm film, and three thick blank graph-paper lab books on which to take notes. I used nearly all of the film, filled two and one-half of the lab books, but recorded fewer than ten hours of interviews on tape. This turned out to be a happy (though gross) miscalculation on my own part rather than a fieldwork failure. In preparation, I figured out how many recordings I might have time and stamina for, and so packed that many cassettes and more. What I had not counted on was how immediately and thoroughly I would become a participant observer in many components of Eyam's daily and festival life (see chapter six). Consequently, 1 made a quick and very good decision not to disrupt the events in which 1 participated by turning on a tape recorder. Instead, 1 participated as earnestly as possible on my hosts' terms and took scrupulous notes as often as possible when 1 found time to myself.
It probably goes without saying that 1 feel a good degree of sadness not to have the opportunity to introduce all of the wonderful, helpful fiiends 1 made and who came to care for my interests as well while 1 visited Eyam. Likewise, 1 wish 1 had chance in this study to account for a larger portion of the terrific encounters and experiences 1 had, all of which contributed to my own understanding of how Eyam villagers respond to outsiders like me. Just about every person 1 met was kind, thoughtful, and interesting in some way. 1 greatly appreciate their friendship and cooperation and still miss them today. The observations in this study are my own unless quoted or attributed to others.
Quotes and attributions are subject to my own documentation. I regret and take full responsibility for any errors I may have made.
Chapters in This Study
Because Eyam is so weU known for its plague story, I devote chapter two to presenting a history of the bubonic plague pandemics in England and Europe known as the Black Death (thirteenth century) and the Great Plague (seventeenth century).
Speaking for myself and doubtlessly many other Eyam enthusiasts, the specter of bubonic plague is a horrifying yet compelling subject. That Eyam villagers suffered a well documented and disastrous outbreak of bubonic plague certainly makes Eyam an object of many people's interest automatically. The great Eyam plague narrative complex offers accounts of what plague looked like, how its victims suffered and died, how individuals and groups made sense of the contagion, and ultimately how the community organized itself to present an organized approach to confronting the threat.
In consideration of this, I also present a survey of some social responses to plague from
England and Europe attempted during both major pandemics.
Chapter three provides a quick description—in the form of a narrated walking tour the length of Church Street through Eyam proper—of the historic landscape of the village. It focuses in particular on plague-related sites that are emphasized by markers and documents in the village itself.
Chapter four accounts for the earliest written evidence that there was a community at the Eyam site. It refers to the primary official documentary record in the village: the Church Register on which important life events of villagers were recorded.
Careful investigation of these records in conjunction with the many nonfictional and fictional accounts of the village's history and plague events in particular provides an
8 effecting triangulating device against which certain hypotheses concerning population swings, plague mortality rates, and even the medical certainty that it was bubonic plague that killed so many there could be tested. This chapter also describes the major written sources from which contemporary traditional narrative accounts of Eyam's history and plague events appear to have been derived.
Chapter five provides a description of heritage or cultural preservation priorities in England on national and local levels, with a special emphasis on the policies and concerns of the Peak District National Park Planning Authority. Evidence presented in this chapter supports one of my primary contentions that although there is terrific energy, expense, and effort devoted to heritage preservation in Eyam, the model is flawed because it does not accommodate for the needs of the living community and instead clearly favors the needs of specifically identified natural and built environments.
Chapter six advances the observation that culture has been omitted from heritage preservation business and offers a discussion of principles arising in an American context in which culture has been successfully included in definitions of heritage envirorunents. In offering this comparison, however, I reveal a surprising insight into what may be at work in the supposed cultural crisis in Eyam. What at first appeaired to me to be a simple and even classic (in terms of recent folklore case studies) case of community transformation in the wake of local economic change suddenly looked slightly different to me, confronting my preconceived notions who was responsible for undesired change and why.
A comprehensive bibliography is included at the end of this study. Key Terms and Definitions
In his 1973 book entitled The Interpretation of Cultures, Clifford Geertz groans that
"the term 'culture' has ... acquired an aura of ül-repute in social anthropological circles because of the multiplicity of its referents and the studied vagueness with which it has
all too often been invoked" (89). How true this seems to be. One who wishes to remain credible in humanities scholarship can hardly speak or write about culture without finding it necessary to qualify uses of the term. It can be understood in so many different ways: as a forensic sample (to take a culture of a biological specimen), as an ethnographic process and product (completing a culture of a mountain group), as a reference to high art or elite forms of expression {Culture "with a big C"), or, as folklorists generally employ it, as a representation of complex, shared human expressions. In fact, the predicament of culture, to slightly misuse a phrase made familiar by James Clifford (1988), is a conundrum shared by yet other terms that are central to this study: identity, tradition, heritage, memory, history, and others. Each idea in one way or another plays a role in the lives of most people all over the world.
Yet each is about as easy to pin down to a single adequate meaning—circumstance after circumstance—as a smoke ring is to clasp with a fist.
It is the folklorist's pleasure and curse to study aspects of human life that can be described by words that have both vernacular and academic meanings (and despairingly broad diversities of meanings within academia alone). The name of our field itself represents this multiplicity very well: what folklorists call folklore is often very different from what most of the general population consider to be folklore. So in the pursuit of understanding aspects of human expression, folklorists (as well as cultural anthropologists, cultural geographers, historians, and others in this shared pursuit) must contend with what Clifford has nicely referred to as "the received definitions" of art, culture, tradition, and almost all other concepts that are near and dear to folklore
10 studies.^ That is, he reminds us that academic terminologies like those that folklorists
use—though assumed to weather a depth of scrutiny uncommon outside of
academia—are themselves vernaculars of a sort whose "received" nahue must be
accounted for if there is any critical progress to be made. At our bleaker moments, many
folklorists may agree w ith Geertz and feel that any sort of term Hke culture that requires
continual reappraisal deserves to have "an aura of ül-repute." But this lack of
precision, or perhaps more accurately the inability to achieve perfect application of term
to phenomenon, is what drives the discipline.
In this dissertation I will examine and describe features of the daily Hfe and
tourist trade of a Eyam small, famous, and popular village in the English North-
Midlands. In doing so, I wül work with several key concepts that have long been part of folklore studies and related fields or, in some cases, are relative newcomers in the critical limelight. In aU cases, however, I wiU rely a great deal on received definitions. It is my goal to take advantage of the best that our multidisciplinary lexicon has to offer whüe moving ahead with at least some of the concepts—especially heritage—in order to develop them past my received definitions ... in order to pass them on to interested takers again ... who in their own him can reinvent them and attempt to temporarily dispel their "studied vagueness" and "aura of ill-repute."
Culture
This eel is as sHppery as they come. "Culture," says James Clifford, "is a deeply compromised idea I cannot yet do without" (1988 10). His exasperation is easy to sympathize with. As we have come to understand that the world and our perceptions of it are idiosyncratically, culturally, and politically constituted, culture has become an
1 Taken from the Introduction to James Clifford and George Marcus, Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, 5-6.
11 especially ballyhooed quarter-acxe plot in hotly contested ground. Thinkers argue that
human culture is relative, political, and infinitely variable; traders in commodities of
many kinds operate very successfully on the principle that culture can be packaged,
priced, sold, and bought; conservationists, having been convinced that culture is
disappearing in what many believe is oiur increasingly isolated, technologically
distancing world, activate themselves as groups in order to prevent cultural groups from
vanishing from the earth; still others look on the idea of culture with indifference through
the ingrained assumption that they themselves have no culture (or at least not the right
kind) and thus it does not concern them as a feature of personal life. To use culture in
ethnographic pursuit is to invoke the potential and jarring influences of its many
received understandings.^ Yes, perhaps it would be nice if we could do without it
sometimes. But (he concept of culture is at the heart of aU group-oriented studies, for in
the determination of what constitutes culture—though it can be defined only
imperfectly—one can achieve an awareness that aU studies of human expressions
depend on imperfectly constructed ideas whose meanings are contmuaUy contested.
In the spirit of Clifford's sentiment that culture is a term he "cannot yet do without," I begin this project with a discussion of culture and how I wiU employ it. Part
of the choice to begin with culture arises firom an instinctive, slightly panicked wiU to get
it over with. After aU, describing the origin of one's own definition of culture is no easy
task. To grapple with culture first is to leave it behind first, and there are certain merits
in this when the goal is to move forward. But the real and more estimable reason for beginning with culture is that in tracing and explaining our current understanding of the idea, I wiU establish a framework for understanding the other terms that are at the heart
2 It is also a curious thing to observe that trained folklorists themselves represent aU four of these groups as well.
12 of this project. After all, they have something significant in common: tradition and heritage—like culture—are all deeply compromised ideas.
Vico and Humanist Foundations for the Study of Culture
As the initial image in a brief story of how we come to conceive of culture in the humanities today, I select a figure who has been named frequently by others in the same cause. His writings and thoughts—though less familiar to some contemporary students of culture and society than those of other crucial theorists such as Descartes, Leibnitz,
Hegel, and Marx—are perhaps more crucial than any of the others because his works precipitated and informed almost all of them. Giambattista Vico (1668-1744), son of a poor bookseller in Naples, travelled about as a young adult in his vain attempt to find employment that could call upon the skills and knowledge he generated through his university training in rhetoric. After failing very miserably to gain the position of
Secretary of the City of Naples, Vico eventually won the chair of rhetoric at the
University. The position was relatively unencumbered by responsibility or prestige among his colleagues and his pay was slight, so for thirty-six years in the post he continued to seek advancement within the university.^ Recognition and advancement did not come for Vico in spite of the fact that he wrote The New Science (1725), a revolutionary proposition that in one fell swoop inverted and trumped the logic of
Descartes's principles of reason and perfect science that had already been dominant in
European thought for more than fifty years.
The Cartesian method of inquiry (which maintained that through processes of deduction one could proceed from a problem analytically and arrive at a self-evident
3 Benedetto Croce, 1913.
13 truth^) was originally applied to problems in geometry and the mathematical sciences for
which unambiguous answers often appear. Eager seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
scholars gradually transferred Descartes's method's momentum into philosophies about
cultures and thought, predicated on the assumption that the poetics of expression
revealed essential human truths just as mathematical analyses arrived at calculable
solutions (themselves considered truths).
Vico saw a great number of problems in the assertion that truth could be
unearthed in the study of thought and expression—or that such a variety of truth
existed at all—and these he enumerated in his Neiu Science. As European history and
culture scholar Hayden White observes, Vico insisted that although Descartes's
principles work well for mathematics and "the processes and structures of physical
nature," it would be necessary to create an entirely "different conceptual apparatus for
the analysis of social and cultural phenomena."® The new apparatus that Vico conjured
into being demanded a recognition that "men can know only that which they themselves
have made or are in principle capable of making"®: venim ipsiim factum. In other words,
Vico had discovered a core principle of humanities scholarship that would wait almost
two hundred years before it was accepted and further developed by cultural theorists,
semioticians, and linguists such as Ferdinand de Saussure, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jacques
Derrida, Kenneth Burke, DeU Hymes, Mikhail Bakhtin, Noam Chomsky, and Frederick
4 Ihid, 1.
5 White, Hayden. 1976. The Tropics of History: The Deep Structure of the New Science. Giambattista Vico's Science of Humanity. Giorgio Tagliocozzo and Donald Philip Verene, eds. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 65-85.
6 Ibid, 65.
14 Jameson^: Vico correctly observed that language and thought are inseparable in the
construction of systems of meaning. Speech, its structures, and its processes, Vico saw,
are the keys to interpreting cultures; reason and scientific analysis are not. White
celebrates Vico's achievement:
At the interior of Vico's thought there resides a principle of interpretation or .. . "hermeneutical principle," of which no thinker in Europe prior to Hegel even glimpsed the possibility. This principle derives from the perception, original with Vico in the form that he gave to it, that speech itself provides the key for interpreting cultural phenomena and the categories by which evolutionary stages of a given culture can be characterized. (70 italics mine)
When 20th century scholars took an interest in the relationships between language and
culture, they resumed Vico's work that would lead to important foUdoristic, Unguistic,
and literary developments. These developments include Kenneth Burke's "grammar of
motives" and "rhetoric of motives"®, DeU Hymes's "ethnography of speaking"^, Mikhail
7 Although contemporary American folklore studies is based on linguistic theories of meaning as deeply as are similar disdpUnes such as linguistics and cultural studies, it is rhetoric whose account of the history of linguistic theory and epistemology I have found to be the most useful from a folklorist's viewpoint. ExceUent edited volumes on the origins shared by these disciplines include Patricia Bizzel's and Bruce Herzberg's The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present (1990, St. Martins) and Contemporary Perspectives on Rhetoric, 2nd ed., by Sonja K. Foss, Karen A. Foss, and Robert Trapp (1991, 1985, Waveland Press).
8 In A Rhetoric of Grammar (1945) and A Rhetoric of Motives (1950), Burke establishes an important framework for talking about motives and the way language is used to influence attitudes and action in an environment of reciprocal influence much Uke that of the performance centered approach that was embraced two decades later. As a rhetorician he sees this theoretical approach as a direct practical link to the classical rhetors who include Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato.
9 DeU Hymes is regarded as the foimder of later 20th-century movements based on the connection between language and culture, initiated in his words as the "ethnography of speaking" (The Ethnography of Speaking. 1962. Anthropology and Human Behavior, T. Gladwin and W.C. Sturtevant, eds. Washington, D C.: Anthropological Society of Washington, 13-53.) and later as the "ethnography of communication" (Introduction: Toward Ethnographies of Communication. 1964. American Anthropologist 66:1-34)
15 Bakhtin's heteroglossia of speech and texts^°, and performance analysis inspired by
Richard Bauman and Americo Paredes in Toward New Perspectives in Folklore}^ The
leading edge of this process initiated by Vico points folklorists and theorists in other
culture-oriented disciplines to what we have now accepted as our conclusion that in
order for us to understand culture we must know how expressions work in each instance
in context, for that is where meaning—very different from Cartesian self-evident
truth—is made.
Vico in his own time was at least partly responsible for supporting another
crucial hypothesis that drove the study of culture for another two centuries. As alluded
to in White's account above, Vico advocated the common belief that cultures formed
and developed in a manner analogous to a living species, with evolutionary progress
through stages that were more or less predictable. This is yet another in a long list of
assertions by Vico that have to be acknowledged by folklorists and other researchers of
culture. He referred to the cultural-evolutionary process as an "ideal eternal history that
aU nations ... must reproduce as they pass from their birth and adolescence through
their period of maturity to their old age and dissolution."^- Although Vico carries his ideas about cultural evolution out to some interesting conclusions, they are generally
"•O The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, by M. Bakhtin. Michael Holquist, ed., Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, trans. Austin: U of Texas P (1981). See also The Bakhtin Reader: Selected Writings of Bakhtin, Medvedev, and Voloshinov. 1994. Pam Morris, ed. London: E. A rnold.
11 Richard Bauman and Americo Paredes, eds. 1972 Tozvard New Perspectives in Folklore. Austin: U of Texas P. This work initiated the fundamental shift that created the performance oriented approach to studying cultural expressive forms (within folklore studies and other disciplines) and integrated their forms and functions in performance.
12 Attributed to Vico, Neio Science book 4. Hayden White, The Tropics of History, 67- 70.
16 inconsistent with what we accept today. What is most important about Vico's belief
for the study of culture today, and again I draw on White, is that cultures continue
through the evolutionary process in spite of the fact that individuals in the cultures come and
go in much shorter life cycles (67). In other words, the knowledge and expressions that
ensure a culture's persistence over time (and thus those that define the culture) are
passed on, reconstituted, re-interpreted through language and symbol from person to
person over space and time. Cultiue is independent of the body and can be passed on
or inherited. This is the nature of culture; this is the nature of knowledge; this is the
nature of language.
Of course the New Science was a direct challenge to the heralded methods and
reason of the physical sciences (it is no coincidence that Vico labeled his philosophy a
"science") and drew a deep line between truth and meaning that w ould not,
unfortunately for Vico, be recognized for another century. Nevertheless in the view of
20th century scholarship, according to White, co-editor of Giambattista Vico: An
International Symposium (1969):
Vico appears to merit attention as a theoretician of the social sciences and as a defender of their claims to autonomy vis-à-vis the physical sciences and their right to seek their own relational and predictive laws in their own conceptualizations. (1976 65-67)
And so the deed was done: when he began his Nezo Science, Vico initiated the movement
that created what still stands as the prevailing philosophical difference between humanist inquiry and hard sciences. Articulated in folklorists' terms today, one could say that Vico found the difference between truth and meaning.
Upon publication of its first edition, Vico's radical new philosophy was met coolly and caused little stir among Vico's peers because (in the opinion of some of his later biographers) it was either simply above their Cartesian mentalities or beyond their
17 status-quo sensibilities. After his long tenure, Vico was removed from his chair at the university and, embittered, he questioned the principles he had championed. The process only strengthened his convictions. Vico retired to family Hfe and private pursuits, included in which was the continual reappraisal of his Nezo Science which, by
1744, had been reincarnated in its third and final edition. As described by Vichian scholar Benedetto Croce, Vico swallowed his bitterness and accepted the philosopher's stance, musing that "I owe this work to the University, which, by judging me unworthy of the chair and not wishing me to be 'occupied in treating paragraphs,' gave me leisure for meditation" (1964 265). As so often is the case with critics whose ideas challenge the establishment, Vico forged w hat would later be recognized as his success outside of the strictly endorsed institutional field of play.
Aside from the powerful assertion of a new method and understanding for the study of social forms, Vico stands out as a the pioneer of the practice of evaluating what were generally considered (in the seventeenth century) non-Uterary forms such as fables and myths. According to Gianfranco CanteUi^'^, Vico interprets myths "as parola, a true and proper linguistic character, a signifying character capable of expressing a certain reafity, or at least a certain interpretation of reahty" (48-49). Myth became for Vico an interpretable, meaningful form that has the function of "a figurative language." This henceforward established a Hnk between the origins of letters and the origins of
13 By its third edition in 1744, the Nezo Science was so profoundly developed and extended beyond the contents of the first edition that some considered it actually to be a new work entirely. Thus the 1744 edition is commonly referred to as Vico's Second Nezo Science.
14 CanteUi, Gianfiranco. 1976. Myth and Language in Vico. Giambattista Vico's Science of Humanity. Giorgio Tagliacozzo and Donald PhilHp Verene, eds. Baltimore: Johns H opkins U P, 47-63.
18 languages, highly significant for later interrogations of culhue and especially those
related to twentieth-century linguistics.
Vico's crucial insights into the nature of culture and into the limited possibility of
hiozuing culture were the founding principles of what a great many people in the social
sciences and humanities study today. But Vico's insistence that myths and fables—"the
mixed mode of brief essays, maxims, fables and sentences"^^ (which at that time nearly
constituted the extent of what people considered to be the spontaneous expressions of
groups of people, what we would now call folklore)—constituted a "poetic logic." This
is perhaps more important for folklore studies today than for any other culture-oriented
disdphne.
Culhire's Role in Romantic Nationalism
The widely accepted evidence that culture was an "integrated, meaningful
whole"^^ permitted the view that new and future nation states had distinct cultural
qualities that lent them essential prowess over other social or political groups. This
"romantic nationalism"^^ was conveniently useful when applied to the cultures of the
more powerful developing European states who embraced the notion. The new states
■*5 Giuseppe Mazzota. 1988. Vico's Encyclopedia. Yale Journal of Criticism l(2):65-79.
16 Dick Hebdidge, in "From Culture to Hegemony," recalls that culture and society were both components of the notion of an organic society, a social superstructure that elevated all groups of people. "Here," he writes, "culture assumed an almost sacred function. Its 'harmonious perfection' was posited against the Wasteland of contemporary life" or, I would add in the romantic nationalists' case, of pre nationalized life. {The Cultural Studies Reader, ed. Simon During. New York: Routledge, 1993, 357-367.)
17 The causes, principles, and effects of romantic nationalism—attributed to Johann Gottfried von Herder for his prolific work on German national folk tales and philosophical works—are well documented in existing scholarship. See also Roger Abraham's "Phantoms of Romantic Nationalism."
19 scrambled madly over themselves and each other to achieve sovereignty, to gain or retain
land, and to win their new citizens over and encourage them to value the brand new
national identities under which very diverse peoples were united politically and
economically. Thus enterprising scholars such as the Grimms, Ehas Lonnrot, Karl Krohn,
and others were egged on by the stirring eighteenth century works of German poet Johann
Gottfried von Herder. Herder had convinced European scholars that there existed
national bodies of folk poetry and that it was possible, even dutiful to "search for the
soul of the people" as revealed in their native language, tales, and other forms of
expression (Dorson^®, 1972 15-16). The newly forged tools of national character and
Volkswissenschaft (folk wisdom) that abounded in the freshly consolidated groups were
very handy implements. They were used in an effort to manufacture the critical social bonds that could maintain the far-reaching economic and political boundaries of nations. It worked, perhaps a bit too well some observers of twentieth century affairs might argue.
Romantic nationalism was very productive and powerful. Each country's story was celebrated for illustrating the most admirable aspects of national culture. National narratives were a common by-product of the nation building process. No self-respecting nation would permit itself to lack ancient narrative evidence of its stature among world powers. Thus one can understand why each of the major national powers at the time in
Western Europe has its own heralded national epic still today—Finland has The
Kalevala; Germany; Die Nibelungenlied; the British Isles: the King Arthur cycle—documented by academic and national preservation machines during the period between about 1700 and 1900.
18 Excerpt from Richard M. Dorson, Folklore and Folklife: An Introduction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972.
20 Culture and Anthropology
At about the time when Western Europe's map was settling into the puzzle that
we recognize still today, the romantic-nationalist zeal was on the wane. Many people
had bought into the cultural claims established by the national narratives, and the process of maintaining national identities with each generation had been adequately
catalyzed. Germans on the map were now Germans culturally too, and their traditional upbringing, their essence, was understood to embody certain qualities that differentiated
them from the English or the French or any other national/cultural group. It was the same for the English, the French, and the other countries of the world: their peoples were the way they were because their cultures made them distinct. What's more, it was accepted as a matter of conventional wisdom that one's national culture made an indelible and unmistakably prominent imprint on one's person. In other words: bom a
, die a . There was no separating the culture of national origin from the person. Perceptions of national identity had already been shaped by what literary scholar and African-Americanist Wemer SoUors calls the "organicist imagery of roots" that illustrate "myths of descent" (1980 6-16). The process produced a set of received definitions of zuho zue are. Just for the sake of example, and not intending to hold this forth as an unassailable point, some have argued that such a belief is notably less significant in American culture. In the "nation of immigrants," familiar American folk ideas suggest that anyone can become an American while it is impossible to truly become
French or to become English, for example. This supposition is very telling because the distinctly American folk idea is itself informed by a pool of narratives^^ (arguably
19 The autobiography of Ben Franklin is particularly evocative and famous in this sense.
21 national narratives) that merit "consent" much more valuable than "descent" in the
measure of character.^°
For our understanding of culture today, folklorists may owe the greatest debt to
anthropologists whose long-standing professional fixation and dependence on culture
have produced many different and fruitful insights into the idea. In 1871, Edward
Burnett Tylor proposed what Audrey Smedley called "the most-quoted definition for
culture that still appears in most introductory anthropology textbooks" (29). Tylor
wrote that culture "is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals,
laws, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of
society" (1871, vol. 1:1). Although folklorists today would prefer to interrogate the
features enumerated in Tylor's definition-^, it does hold up admirably by conveying the
general complexity of a system that links people with others into a larger whole.
In the anthropological view of cultiue characterized by Tylor's definition, culture
was assumed to comprise a single elevated plane (a "complex whole," barkening back to
Vico) of human experience and potential within which the achievements of aU societies
were subsumed. Culture was a level of sophistication toward which groups evolved
(and aspired, at least in the Western opinion). Culture was an attribute affixed to the
20 Wemer SoUors, in Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture, explains his terminology as foUows: "Descent relations are those defined by anthropologists as relations of 'substance' (by blood or nature); consent relations describe those of 'law' or 'm arriage'" (6).
21 For example, the concept of morals is extremely vague in a theoretical sense. It is a social construct whose terms are relative and changeable and whose application is most meaningful within a Judeo-Christian social system. Of course aU cultures have sodcil and personal standards, but establishing them by use of the term "morals" conjures associations that are most meaningful within one group's enterprises. To apply an evidentiary standard that determines the existence and nature of morals in groups for whom the term does not carry the same broad implications is to look for almonds growing on an orange tree: there's matter there, but if you're looking for it in the shape of something else, you're sure not to find it.
22 body as firmly as the skin. Tylor's view, shared by many in anthropology and other
fields for a very long time, supports the general contention that any given people have a
culture, historically derived and biologically conferred. To view it in the cultural
evolutionary sense as many nineteenth century scholars did, it would have been more
precise to state that any given people exist at a certain developmental stage of culture.
Therefore some peoples, according to the formula, could be demonstrated to be more
culturally advanced than others. Culture was a scale used to place groups into a
hierarchy against one another, with many troubling implications.
Because Europe in the 1800s, like North America, was rapidly industrializing
and equipping its social structures for the new era in which nation states would hold political, economic, and military sway, attention paid to culture was done in a salvage mode. Folklorists are very familiar with the origins of the word "folklore."^ Folklore was adopted by scholars as a favorable alternative to terms like "popular antiquities" and "survivals," which betrayed the bias of industrialization by locating authentic culture squarely in primitive, illiterate (or preHterate) groups. It was believed that the more a nation advanced in terms of technical achievements, mass education, and political complexity^, the less its cultural expressions (or its culture as a whole) could survive. Because researchers believed that a culture's current greatness—or less self- servingly, its nature—could be demonstrated through exarnining relics of its own ancient
22 William John Thoms, in an anonymous letter to Athaneum, 1846, suggested that folk lore (modeled on the German word Volkszvissenschaft—literally peoples' wisdom) should replace popular antiquities.
23 For a particularly curious explication of causes for social change that some believed could obscure evidence of more primitive cultural roots, see Clark Wissler's Man and Culture, London: George G. Harrap, 1923. As the three chief factors contributing to the shift from pre-industrial to industrial culture he names "mechanical invention, mass education, and universal suffrage" (5). Wissler was highly regarded in his time, along with Emile Durkheim and A. L. Kroeber, as a founding theorist for the "science of anthropology. "
23 roots and by structural comparison with other cultures, the disciplines of anthropology
and folklore came into existence.
Margaret Mead, in her 1932 "Note from New Guinea" in American Anthropologist,
writes of her ethnographic activities in the field^^:
We are just completing a culture of a mountain group here in the lower Torres Chelles. They have no name and we haven't decided what to call them yet. They are a very revealing people in spots, providing a final basic concept from which all the mother's brothers' curses and father's sisters' cruses, etc., derive...
James Clifford notes that "a culture," in Mead's use of the term, is a descriptive work
that Ccin be relocated away from the group that has been observed and described. In
this sense it is ethnographic process and product. Such an interpretation of culture was very attractive to political and economic leaders from the late eighteenth century through
the nineteenth century, an era of nation-building in Western Europe and Scandinavia where most cultural study at the time was taking place.
Franz Boas and a Shift in Views tozuard Culture
Among anthropologists, folklorists hold Franz Boas (1858-1942) as one of the nearest and dearest and recognize how central his work and the contributions of his many famous students are to the nature of folklore studies as it exists today. Boas was a comprehensive scholar and innovator, founding university programs, museum programs, and scholarly societies in anthropology and folklore. He was instrumental in defining the American Folklore Society as an organization that supports fieldwork- oriented research on social groups. He and his colleagues and students in anthropology
24 Margaret Mead, "Note from New Guinea." American Anthropologist 34(1932):740.
24 dominated Society proceedings around and after the turn of the twentieth century^
(Bronner 34-37; Zvunwalt, 22-45). Boas also provided a methodological model for the development of fieldwork-oriented professions such as anthropology and folklore, forsaking the Library and reading room for the intimate proximity of interaction with his subjects in the field.^^ Among folklorists—of Literary or anthropologicaL bents—at and around the turn of the twentieth century. Boas championed the very successful approach that maintained that folklore (that is the tales, the songs, the matter wLiich is collected and observed) is part of culture and that a group's culhue could be understood to a greater degree by attempting to understand the group's folklore.
Although he generally agreed with Tylor's broadly enumerated description of the components of culture. Boas insisted that culture, in the words of Rosemary Levy
Zumwalt, represents "a way of life and not a stage of development" toward some inferred pinnacle achievement (111). He observed and then vehemently argued that culture is embodied in the expressions of individuals who are participants in societies and that people and their expressions all influence one another in the creation, maintenance, and transmission of the culture. Referring to a museum display in which items were displayed outside of any organization related to their meaning in the culture.
Boas said "By regarding a single implement outside of its surroundings, outside of other phenomena affecting that people and its productions, we cannot understand its
25 Boas also, as controlling figure in the American Folklore Society, worked well to limit the study of folklore to oral traditions and reserved material and behavioral forms of expression for the field of anthropology, establishing a rift that remained clear between the fields for more than one half of a century afterward (Bronner 36).
26 See Rosemary Levy Ziunwalt's American Folklore Scholarship: A Dialogue of Dissent for an excellent discussion of the view that the American performance-oriented discipline of folklore studies arose from hterary and anthropological traditions.
25 meaning"^. Ln other words, meaning is created in context and can change from person to person and circumstance to circumstance. This insight—to express the impact freely—rocked the world of folklore studies and ultimately led to meticulous contextual studies and the now-venerable, powerful foUdoristic performance theory that originated in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States and still manages to have a strong influence after nearly 30 years of test and scrutiny.
To quote Zumwalt again. Boas and his colleagues were asking "'what was the nature of culture' and 'how was this reflected in folklore?'" (1988 99-104).
Anthropology is the discipline that held ground maintaining culture as a complex phenomenon that should be defined on more local levels w ith every step closer to the individual. As Louis Wirth says, "Perhaps the most significant contribution which anthropology has made to social science and to popular intelligence centers around the concept of culture and the independence of culture from biology."^® In this view, culture must be looked at as a plural phenomenon, not as a singular human plane of experience.
Anthropology is where the notion of local cultures arose (even if it wasn't referred to in this way).
Only when recognizing the complicated nature of the concept as it has been scrutinized for these past centuries can I comfortably express my own general acceptance of the "deeply compromised idea" of culture. Ultimately, I agree with E. B.
Tylor and Geertz in that culture can be described as "learned behavior that varies independently of the physical characteristics of the people who carry it" but must
27 R obert Lowie, 1948. Some Facts about Boas. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 4:69-70.
28 Louis W irth. 1953. The Social Sciences. American Scholarship in the Twentieth Century, ed. Merle Curb, 33-82. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
26 necessarily be understood as "webs of significance" as in the metaphor that "man is an
animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun" (Geertz 1973,5).
Heritage
Earl Spencer, in his widely televised Westminster Abbey eulogy for Princess
Diana in the summer of 1997, symbolically addressed his deceased sister and offered
the following calculated, public pronouncement about the fate of her two royal boys:
We fully respect the heritage into which they have both been bom, and will
always respect and encourage them in their royal role. But we, like you,
recognize the need for them to experience as many different aspects of life as
possible, to arm them spiritually and emotionally for the years ahead. I know
you would have expected nothing less from us. (September 6,1997)
As most of the world knows, the "heritage" into which Princes William and Harold
"have both been bom" to which Spencer refers is the highly visible, complex, and absolutely unique world of the English royal family. To begin to grasp the clevemess and reach of Spencer's statement requires an appreciation of what heritage means in lexical and cultural terms as well as what it means politically within a breathtaking array of different contexts. Heritage is an idea embraced by Westem and developing cultures aUke, rich with different meanings, and riddled with mixed sensibilities about pleasure, pride, pain, community, economy, and identity. It is a term that, in its vemacular parlance, hints at the good and bad (usually the good) of group life and memory and generally encourages either reflection on some sort of redeeming past or redemption through reflection on a more troubled past. Either way, connection with a
27 heritage or one's heritage is a very big deal—especially in the postmodern moment—and
much of this is involved in the community crisis identified in Eyam.
In the foreground,, we all hke heritage. That is, Americans and British are
especially fond of their heritages and pursue them vigorously in many different ways. In
the backgroimd, heritage often functions as the central feature of a highly political and economically driven system that invents representations of what heritage seekers seek out. Examples, many taken up in folklore scholarship, abound: in the 1970s, Lindsborg,
Kansas reinvented itself as the Swedish festival town of the Midwest^^; cultural tourism in Bah invigorates local economies^°; the "invented" traditions of Interlaken, Switzerland bring tourist currency but also satisfy an important local need for heritage and identity^^; environmental (and cultural) conservationists decry the impact of heritage marketing and argue that celebrating heritage can destroy it^^; folklorists and cultural researchers themselves, through their interpretive and documentary research practices, are
29 Larry Danielson. 1991. St. Lucia in Lindsborg, Kemsas. Creative Ethnicity: Symbols and Strategies of Contemporary Ethnic Life, Stephen Stem and John Allan Cicala, eds. Logan: Utah State UP, 187-203.
30 PhUip Frick McKean. 1977. Towards a Theoretical Analysis of Tourism: Economic Dualism and Cultural Involution in Bah. Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism, Valene L. Smith, ed. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P.
31 Regina Bendix. 1989. Tourism and Cultural Displays: Inventing Traditions for W hom? Journal of American Folklore 102:131-146.
32 Michael Specter. 1997. Pristine Russian Far East Sees Its Fate in Gold. Nezo York Times: June 9.
28 "collaborators in the making of heritage"^^, an act that is politically constituted and highly problematic.
Heritage has caught the attention of scholars in many disdpLLnes, including folklore studies, history, anthropology, rhetoric, cultural studies, women's studies, sociology, British studies, American studies, and general and foreign language education.
Nevertheless, heritage is a relative newcomer as an object of study of its own accord.
Thus while researchers in all of these disciplines are on the right track and have provided some excellent theoretical models for understanding this unique term, there is still a long way to go before we can thoroughly understand why heritage is, as James
Clifford has said of culture, "a deeply compromised idea [we] cannot yet do without."
Any discussion of heritage theory m ust involve economy, and in fact the term heritage industry has become quite familiar to many cultural critics and their readers.
Linda Colley, in a review of historian David Lowenthal's The Heritage Crusade and the
Spoils of History, observes: "heritage is customer-driven."^ Robert Cantwell, an
American folklorist, makes a related poiat that illuminates one economic mechanism at work in the heritage industry: describing culturally themed businesses referred to by retail developers as "festival markets" (such as Boston's Quincy Market or Baltimore's
Harbor Place), he observes that "shops and taverns jockey for the quality of authenticity that seems to consist, not only in the excellence of the counterfeit, but in the possibility that we may make it, through a money transaction, our own" (45). The problem with this system is that such establishments can never be authentic—having been constructed
33 Mary Hufford. 1994. Introduction: Rethinking the Cultural Mission. Conserving Culture: A New Discourse on Heritage. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1-14.
34 Linda Colley. 1997. Nezu York Times, Literary Supplement 9.
29 in the image of an idea, a simulacrum—and thus are at best (yet quite sufficient for their own interests) "always capable of arousing an association but never of articnilating it"
(44).
David Brett (an Irish historian concerned with the notion of heritage as applied to Irish contexts ^^) characterizes heritage as a process and (its enactment) a
"'deproblematised' story-teUing," what Cantwell has described as a "cryptohistory invested with values that, so long as they remain concealed in the sign, can advance one cmltural project in the name of a n o th e r.In many heritage sites such as Colonial
Williamsburg (U.S.), Eyam, Plague Village (England), Gettysburg National Park (U.S.),
Kamchatka National Park (Russia), the failed Disney's America historical theme park
(U.S.), and thousands of other sites all over the world, the cultural project is local economic invigoration advanced in the neune of heritage protection. By inscribing a cultural project with "heritage," its proponents load their argument with the vast associations people have with their own culture, its perceived essence, and its fragility, providing an unarticulated argument that is nevertheless extremely difhcmlt for opponents to overcome.
But the notion that "we may make [heritage], through a money transaction, our own" is not simply a critic's grouchy contention; it is a postulation that has proven useful and made its way into the policies and practices of the Peak Park Planning
Authority. It couldn't be easier to read: the Peak Park Structure Plan states that "All the
National Park's constituent authorities wish to increase tourism, and are 'selling' the
Peak District as an asset" (1.12.vi). A number of problems become apparent here: one.
35 David Brett. 1996. The Construction of Heritage . Cork: Cork UP.
36 Robert Cantwell. 1993. Ethnomimesis: Folklife and the Representation of Culture. Chapel HÜ1: U of North Carolina P, 44.
30 it is not the Peak District that is being sold or consumed, it is what is in it or represented by it; two, for something to be considered an asset it must be owned by someone or a collective, and this sort of control appears to be in the hands of the Planning Authority and its constituents, yet neatly tucked away under the code of public ownership and the celebration of "English heritage"; three, it is the visible landscape (most of which is still privately owned), the architecture (again, most still privately owned), and the culture that is made available and featured for consumption in the Peak Park (and folklorists and other cultural researchers still don't know how to say who oivns culture). So if these three points are assumed valid, then the question becomes how can the Peak Park sell the park if it doesn't own its "most valued characteristics" to begin with?
The answer, as we will see in this study, is that the Park operates on the basis that it is guarding, protecting, preserving, or conserving local heritage. But it does so with an inherently flawed definition of heritage, one that specifically celebrates the collectively revered natural environment and the collectively remembered built environment while it eliminates the living culture, the "life world" (as Barbara
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett calls it) from the heritage equation. Thus by claiming only the natural beauty and the historical structures, there is by definition no cultural conflict risked in marketing them for consumption in heritage tourism.
In his critique of culttual representations in general, Cantwell rationalizes this consumption-based system of signifiers as a general instinctive (and in his sense lamentable) overture toward the "reunification of cultural knowledge with cultural practice," a split that was forged by the commercial institutions that now "offer to reunite them, but on [the commercial institutions'] own terms" (44). Eyam HaU
(described in chapter six) is the most obvious example of this function in Eyam, but there are other entities at work, including Eyam Museum, private tour guides and lecturers, the Village Association itself, and even the Church which makes attempts to
31 present an image that it is above this sort of system in the first place. Perhaps it is not
surprising to cultural specialists, but these groups and institutions are deeply and
inextricably imbedded in the system that separates culture from heritage artifact in
Eyam.
David Brett makes an observation concerning the roles of the picturesque and the
pastoral in creating the commodity of heritage, and it neatly describes a major dynamic
inherent in the planning system and tourist economy that is bearing on Eyam: Seduced
by fascination for the visual and the unfettered, "we are actually de-historidsing the
countryside from a place created by real human agencies, to an object of aesthetic
contemplation, and failing to see it as a location for productive w ork.. .. [thus]
^heritage' is a form of popular history" (1996 50-51).
In the many critical works that theorize the concept of heritage, a common
assumption among them seems to be that there is a display component necessary for the
constitution of heritage. While one might speak of having a cultural heritage, knowing
that heritage regularly seems to imply encounter with evidence or reflections of that heritage. Robert Hewison, in The Heritage Industry: Britain in a Climate of Decline,
addresses the concept of heritage head on, though specifically under the premise that it is contributing to a Britain in decline. Because of this narrow focus, other UK cultural scholars generally dismiss Hewison's overall conclusions but give an appreciative nod for his taking on the subject so directly. Even so, Hewison offers an unhappy portent
that rings true to the fears of many in Eyam. Writing of what he calls "a new cultural force of which museums are only a part," Hewison identifies "the heritage industry" which, he says, "is expected more and more to replace the real industry upon which this country's economy depends." Instead, he complains, "we are manufacturing heritage, a commodity which nobody is able to define yet everyone is eager to sell" (1987 9-11).
32 Whether for sale in a gift shop, for immersion in a historic park, or for admiration in a museum, the element of presentation seems definitely to be there. Barbara
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett observes that
Heritage adds value to existing assets that have either ceased to be viable (subsistence lifestyles, obsolete technologies, abandoned mines, evidence of past disasters) or that never were economically productive.... Heritage organizations ensure that places and practices in danger of disappearing because they are no longer occupied or functioning or valued will survive. It does this by adding the value of pastness, exhibition, difference, and, where possible, indigeneity. (1998 150-151).
This description describes how Eyam and its Peak District environs have been converted from isolated, unproductive, undeveloped entities into valuable commodities.
Continuing her discussion about heritage, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett adds that "Heritage and tourism are collaborative industries, heritage converting locations into destinations and tourism making them economically viable as exhibits themselves" (151). This is indeed a spooky description of what is going on between the Peak District national park (which has dictated the terms of Eyam's conversion and named the process heritage preservation) and Eyam whose communitas has been made irrelevant for the sake of its own heritage preservation. And therein lies the fundamentail irony, in my opinion. In order to celebrate local heritage, that heritage must be marketed for consumption. When marketed for consumption, the heritage must be protected from the wear and tear of the tourists as well as from einy inconsistent influences on the parts of local peoples there.
As Brett has observed, the hum an figure (in this case, local residents) is no more desirable in the foreground of a heritage display than it is in a picturesque landscape p ain tin g (47-56).
When Earl Spencer referred to the young princes' heritage into which they were bom, he was not speaking simply of their history or lineage or inherited responsibility.
Those items may be kept private, at least in principle. By invoking the term heritage,
33 however, Spencer invoked what he must certainly have intended to portray as the ugly side of their familial duty: to be part of an image not of their own making, not of their ownership, and one that demands that they become visible, accessible resources for a greedy, voyeuristic nation and world. This must have been a cold jab at the consuming public and the media hounds they energize, since it was the very ruthlessness and visibility of Diana's endless display that had consequence in the cause of her death.
For the purposes of this document, I must make use of heritage as a concept in two ways. First, it is clear to me that heritage is a way of referring to a cultural past—one's one or someone else's—but in a way that specifically involves display and consumption, a "transaction" (in Cantwell's terms) that allows the consumer to make that heritage his or her own, even if only temporarily. Second, I have to borrow the term and deduce its meaning and function when it is invoked by authorities (such as the Peak
Park, English Fleritage, the Department of Transport, Environment, and the Regions, for example) that control the flow of funding and other support into Eyam and its immediate vicinity. The first way of using heritage is theorized, adaptable to specific analytical contexts; the second is functional, to the extent that it guides the implementation of planning policies, but generally untheorized, as I will show in chapter five.
Preservation and Conservation
The preservative impulse is probably as old as any self-conscious hiunan motive, flourishing over centuries and millennia in acts of personal and national memoriaHzation
(Fryd; Dow; Hewison), the inculcation of sacred and secular political authority (Cressy), the assertion of group identity and claims (Lowenthal 1994), and the pursuit of individual glory and fame. As a growing body of scholarship in historical disciplines asserts, a substantial portion of the preservative impulse originated concurrently with or
34 directly from the development of the nation-state (GiUis; Fryd). By the late eighteenth
century, following on the heels of well-developed classical studies in Englemd and
Europe, arose the pursuit of a more specialized breed of relics that reflected the essential
characteristics of national cultures: commonly referred to at the time as popular
antiquities. Popular antiquities referred mostly to verbal forms of expression that
related to primitive, pre-literate peasant classes believed to embody core virtues and
survivals of advanced cultures' earliest formations. The study of these forms developed
into literary studies, anthropology, and ultimately my own field of folklore studies
(Bronner; Zumwalt). As divergent as these disciplines may appear from time to time to
insiders today, they share a common circumstance of birth: they are all modem professions initiated (at least in part) from the desire to save what was believed to be valuable and disappearing, to preserve what would otherwise change and thus disappear.
The distinction between preservation an d conservation most useful in this study is simple and straightforward. Conservation is preferred among folklorists and others interested in protecting cultural resources. The conservation principle recognizes that nothing is unchanging, even cultures and their traditions. If a rock can turn to dust and a
Michelangelo painting can darken and grow less vivid, then natural and built treasures like the petroleum supply, Ohio wetlands, and the Abraham Lincoln family home in
Springfield, Illinois will surely change, grow scarce, or disappear altogether over time.
They might even cease to exist entirely. Conservation begins with an understanding that aU things change and, eventually, disappear. It is impossible to stop change, yet it is possible to slow change down greatly so that more people can make greater use the objects, ideas, or expressions being conserved. Thus when I refer to cultural conservation, it is with the specific intent to convey that there is no presumption that the culture can be flash-frozen in time.
35 Preservation as a protective measure generally comes with the assumption that
treasured items may be held in some sort of protective stasis for a finite duration. Thus one may speak of preserving excess quantities of fimit in the fall for the purpose of having safe, healthy fruit available long after it is out of season. But to speak of conserving the fruit suggests something different hke consuming it at a slower or more appropriate rate in such a way that its good effects are maximized over time. In this study, I report on various organizations in certain time periods that sought to preserve artifacts of cultural heritage such as landscape, structures, or even the natural environment. This would usually reflect a dated perspective on the protection mission, one that does not adequately accept and compensate for the the inevitabüity of change.
In more recent years, those same organizations and many others have consciously attempted to use the word conservation and to account for change in their protection plans and appraisals of success or failure. In chapter five, I draw particular attention to whether or not planning organizations that influence Eyam conform to the preservation or conservation ideologies, important factors that can determine how successful the policies are in local and cultural terms.
36 CHAPTER 2
SOCIAL, MEDICAL, AND RELIGIOUS IMPLICATIONS OF THE PLAGUE
IN ENGLAND AND EUROPE
Eyam is a Derbyshire village nestled, as travel authors like to say, in a protected and sheltering valley between the high moors of England's Peak District. Although it is a typical village, neither more nor less pretty than other villages in the region, it stands above most of them because of something that happened there more than three hundred years ago.
The plague hit Eyam in 1665. The better part of one year and 85 deaths later, the mortality rate was on the rise and the churchyard was growing full during the wet, cold spring. And then the event occurred. The terror-stricken villagers, ready to flee to aU comers of England, were brought to heel in the churchyard by their new rector,
Wüliam Mompesson:
"My friends, the safety of all the country round about us is in our keeping. If you aU flee away you wül take the Plague with you, far and wide. You cannot escape death by flight; many of us are already infected, though we know it not...." At this a groan came from the crowd, and 1 in the midst of the press stood so close against my neighbour I knew not if 1 too had groaned or no. "... The invisible seeds of death are hidden within your clothing, and in the bundles you would carry with you, and in your very bodies; while not saving yourselves you will bring death on coimtless others as you go. Oh, will you go to God and his judgement with the guüt of deaths innumerable and suffering untold upon your souls?" As he said this the crowd broke; Lydia Kemp took up her skirt hem in her hand and ran away, going towards the comer of the churchyard furthest from
37 w here MomphessonS^barred the way, with others running after her, to climb over the low wall into the street. And so, I think, the flight would have taken place, had not she, doing so, found herself suddenly facing the old parson, who had come up the street, and was standing there, looking at us all over the wall. There was a noise of voices, telling him what was afoot, which died down abruptly, as he stared at us and said nothing. Then Momphesson called to him across the churchyard, and across us aU, "Thomas Stanley! There is many a quarrel between thee and me, on doctrine, and on morals, and on faith. And yet I trust you, you being a m an of God after your own lights, that you will stand at my side now, and help me, and teU the people that they must not go!" Then there was a long moment while Parson Stanley drew breath ... and Parson Stanley said, "Stir not any from this place. What good will it do you, to flee from the wül of God? Is there a place of safety, if God wills your deaths? Or any danger if he wills it not? Stay where God has appointed you to dwell, and pray without cease!"3S
The passage quoted above is an excerpt from Jül Paton Walsh's 1983 novel entitled A Parcel of Patterns. Her novella is a recent entry in a very long list of accounts of Eyam's plague. To pick up where Paton Walsh leaves off, the villagers did stay and, so the story goes, prevented the plague from spreading into the country "round about" them. Because of the villagers' faith, their selflessness, or their fear—whatever the reason the story leads one to credit—the plague is said to have spread no further north in Englcind than Eyam. Devastated by the time the deadly disease finally disappeared from the village, Eyam went about its business to rebufld and redefine its new community.
That a particularly virulent, rapid, and deadly disease—almost certainly bubonic plague, Pasteurella pestis—did hit Eyam and claimed nearly 300 lives is true beyond doubt. Parish church registers and local estate documents ratify the oral and written narrative accounts of the plague deaths in Eyam. Additional documentary evidence
37 Momphesson and Mompesson are two variants of the rector's name; the latter is the most common and is the spelling used in present-day pubhcations on Eyam's plague. Both spellings, however, can be found in tiie rector's own hand.
38 Paton Walsh. 1983. A Parcel of Patterns, 89-90.
38 shows a clear pattern of transmission of this disease leading to the English North
Midlands (where Eyam is) and originating in London which had been struck by well-
documented bubonic plague late in 1664. The Eyam plague was actually just one
numerically insignificant episode of the much greater pandemic that had already
previously swept through France, Italy, and other parts of Westem and Northern
Europe, hitting large population centers especially hard on its way from India and Asia
along trade and migration routes. This chapter outlines the major cultural, medical, and
social factors that shaped how Eyam's villagers responded to the plague when it began
killing members of their community.
Biology of the Bubonic Plague
Thanks to Japanese doctor Shiba Saburo Kitasato's and Swiss doctor Alexander
Yersin's^^ collaborative research in 1894, we know that the bacillus now called Yersinia
pestis is the cause of bubonic plague. French doctor Paul Lewis Simond later discovered
that rat fleas Qienopsylla cheopsis) were the link between infected rats and humans. The
fleas that bit infected rats transmitted bubonic plague to the humans whom they bit
afterward (McNeil 21; Watts 5). Among rats, black rats were the most hospitable
carriers. Their preference for habitation in and around people's dwellings placed them
in heart of the vector system'*^ for the plague, and they unfortunately happened to become (at least for a time) the most prolific rats in the areas hit hardest: India, Asia,
North Africa, the Mediterranean, Europe, and the British Isles. Other species such as
39 Yersin was a student of Louis Pasteur who discovered anthrax's method of infection and transmission between cattle and humans.
40 In epidemic terminology, a vector is a disease's specific mode of transmission. Vectors may be rat fleas delivering rat blood into humans' blood streams, sputum coughed into the air near other people, blood on shared needles, or even secretions from mucous membranes during close physical contact.
39 brown rats are also susceptible to bubonic plague, but their habitation patterns placed them closer to the periphery of the epidemic cycle than their black rat relatives. In
Epidemics and History: Disease, Power, and Imperialism (1997), medical historian Sheldon
Watts describes the process through which plague is transmitted between black rats and humans:
Once infected with the plague bacillus [by biting an infected rat], the rat flea is unable to digest its food—rat's blood—and becomes voraciously hungry. After the rat dies of plague, the flea looks desperately around for food and if a human host is available moves there. However, because one human being cannot transfer bubonic plague directly to another, the unseen force governing the bacillus Yersinia pestis regards humans as a cul-de-sac. While waiting for a new animcil host, a displaced rat flea might hibernate for up to fifty days in grain ... or in soft white things, such as woolen cloth. Since both grain and cloth were important items of trade, their transport was one of the ways in which humans spread the plague. (5)
Pasteurella pestis belongs to a family of b a c illi that cause other infectious diseases such as tuberculosis. Once a population—human or rat—contracts the disease, the disease tends to become situated in—or endemic to—that area. Over great periods of time ranging from months to decades, if left unchecked by medical treatment and proper preventative controls, these same populations or their later generations will occasionally see flare-ups or recurrences of plague.'*^ According to the Am erican C enter for Disease
Control:
Plague is transmitted from rodent to rodent by infected fleas and is characterized by periodic disease outbreaks in rodent populations, some of which have a high death rate. During these outbreaks, hungry infected fleas that have lost their normal hosts seek other sources of blood, thus increasing the risk to humans and other animals frequenting the area. Epidemics of plague in
41 In medical, historical, and literary usage, the term "plague" generally refers to bubonic plague in particular as opposed to pneumonic plague or other related forms. In this case study, "plague" will also refer spedfically to bubonic plague except when otherwise indicated or when reference is made to historical accounts of "plague" as a nonspecific, medically unidentified affliction or threat.
40 humans usually involve house rats and their fleas. Rat-bome epidemics continue to occur in some developing countries, particularly in rural a r e a s.4 2
Between outbreaks, the plague bacterium is believed to circulate within populations of certain species of rodents without causing excessive mortality. Such groups of infected animals serve as silent, long-term reservoirs of infection. Humans are not normally the primary victims or carriers of plague, and so the disease cannot be endemic among groups of people even if it recurs in localized populations from time to time. It is maintained in rodent populations and when the circumstances are right it re enters human communities to exact its toll.
Domestic cats (and sometimes dogs) are readily infected by fleas or from eating infected wild rodents. Although cats and dogs may also bring plague-infected fleas into the home, domestic animals have only rarely been direct vectors on a significant scale because they tend not to propagate and migrate as freely and in such abundance as the millions of black rats that spread over six continents during this millennium.
Although many believe that the widespread use of antibiotics in the 20th century has eliminated bubonic plague, it still exists and claims thousands of lives every year worldwide (Center for Disease Control). Penicillin is actually useless against it as a curative measure. Poorer regions of the world with relatively weak sanitation and medical care are hardest hit today, but even the American Southwest has a persistent plague problem'^^ maintained in squirrel and other rodent populations and passed on to humans mostly through contact in national parks. Where there are rats in abundance, there is often plague. The formula holds true even today.
4-2 The Center for Disease Control web page is www.cdc.gov. The Center's official information concerning bubonic plague is available to the public via a search engine.
43 Claiming an average of 18 human lives annually in the United States (Center for Disease Control www.cdc.gov).
41 The Black Death—the "prima pestilentia" of 1348—earned its vivid name from
the black glandular swellings and dark hemorrhages below the skin that characterized
the rapid attack of bubonic plague. Once its victim contracts the disease, usually from
an infected flea, the incubation period can range anywhere between twelve hours to three
to five days. The first symptoms include fever, delirium and disorientation, nausea, and
headache. Other early and medically unconfirmed symptoms referred to inconsistently
in literature of the period and later (but dated) medical scholarship include bizarre
phenomena such as wild eye rolling and the victim's mistaken sense that there was an
unnaturally sweet scent in the air (Daniel 1994, 40-42; MuUett; Ziegler; Twigg). Later,
usually within just a matter of two or three more days, the black glandular
swellings—buboes—would appear in the groin, armpits, and neck of its victim. They
were excruciatingly painful, and if they burst they oozed dark, thick pus that terrified
the victim and onlookers and released a terrible stench.
Lacking the sophisticated medical insights of today, many people believed that
the air or airborne stenches were the source of plague and the method of its
transmission. RecaUing medical theories of Hippocrates and others, medical practitioners of the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries blamed "poisonous miasma" or
"vapours" of bearing the plague (Creighton; MuUett). Thus people carried posies (smaU sacks or clusters of fragrant matter such as spices and herbs) to ward off dangerous stenches. In communities where the plague was leveling entire households in the matter of days, stenches were especiaUy strong as one could easily imagine. The most feared vapors emanated directly from the plague dead and the dying who were moumfuUy plentiful at the height of an epidemic.
There are many fascinating descriptions and ülustrations in period documents depicting other bizarre-seeming methods for avoiding the vapors of plague. The most fascinating image has to be the famous beak mask smd to have been worn by some
42 physicians when treating plague victims (Nohl; CipoUa 1981). Engravings show a figure dressed in a long, heavy robe with a scarf holding a wide-brimmed hat tightly to the top of the head. Over the physician's face is a conical mask, stylized (at least in the engravings) to resemble an intimidating and predatory bird of prey's beak and face.
Carlo CipoUa describes the costume's supposed function: "The nose of the sinister costume was supposed to act as a filter, being fiUed with materials imbued with perfumes and aUeged disinfectants. The lenses [over the eyes] were also supposed to protect the eyes from the miasmas" (1981 10)
The beak mask must have been terribly intimidating and unnerving for the sick as weU as the onlookers, contributing mightily to their fear of plague and convictions that it arose from supernatural or divine causes. Graphic ülustrations and portrayals of the plague and its victims were plentiful then. Examples surviving today are easy to come by in print (especiaUy Uluminations in reUgious documents and pubUc health booklets), in sculpture and other art, and even in architecture. The figures of death wielding a scythe and the animated skeleton became common icons of plague and pestilence during the dark and middle ages. The imagery focused strongly on the power and swiftness of plague to turn normal life into a hellish and deadly circumstance, and no quarter was free of the imagery just as none was firee from risk of plague. In Niimberg's Church of
Our Lady, for example, there is a series of wooden panels attached to the piers along the nave. They are angled so that their fronts face the assembly, depicting saints and common people engaged in acts of devotion. But upon inspection of the rear side of one of the panels, one sees a grisly depiction of a plague-dead corpse, skeletal and fuU of worms, stiU engaged in the act of devotion depicted on the firont. In Europe, the horror
44 CipoUa cites an Ulustration from Historianim anatomicanim medicarum rarionim (1991) by Thom as Barthokn.
43 stretched even into the material of church, and neither the church, the public institutions, nor folklore could offer much solace or protection.
Plague in Europe
A statement found in most scholarship about the history and effects of plague on the Asian, African, and European continents is that arriving at conclusive results on the subject is nearly impossible. There are references to "plague" and "pestilence" in literature and other documentary evidence from cultures as diverse in time and place as ancient Babylon'^^, H an China, the Mongol Empire, Justinian Rome, Tudor England, and the 20th century American Southwest (McNeil; CipoUa 1977 & 1981; Slack 1985; Jordan
1996). To make matters especiaUy difficult, references to "plague" and "pestilence" may mean entirely different things, artifact to artifact or culture to culture. They could refer to actual bubonic plague as we know it medicaUy today. They could refer to any number of other epidemic diseases endemic over various periods to Europe, north
Africa, and Asia, including anthrax, tuberculosis, and smaUpox. References to plague and pestilence could even mean general blight, famine, or other suffering brought on by non-epidemiological threats such as drought, locust, or even warfare.
Present-day uncertciinty about the biological nature of each epidemic is yet another of the factors that confounds inquiry into historical aspects of plague today.
Among the problems that prevent researchers in many fields from detennining conclusively what was the cause of each outbreak are a lack of reliable evidence concerning the sizes of populations in Europe (century by century) and records of
45 The Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet 11, line 184 as found in B. Pritchard, ed.. Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton, 1950), p. 19. A Une referring to the god of pestilence is quoted in this book, but in at least one popular translation (see Gilgamesh: A Verse Narrative, trans., Herbert Mason, New York: Penguin, 1970) the reference to pestilence is missing altogether.
44 medieval medical diagnoses that were too primitive to shed much light on obviously complex septic conditions. Most scholars and medical researchers tend to agree that bubonic plague was a major factor in the two most significant plague outbreaks in
European history: the Black Death (fourteenth century) and the Great Plague
(seventeenth century). One of the few consensus conclusions about bubonic plague in particular is that it seems to have originated in Central Africa or the Middle East.
This study is much less concerned, however, with the actual medical certainty of these plague's natures than it is with the fact that great plagues did happen in Europe and England during the three himdred year period beginning in the fourteenth century.
Estimates of the numbers of deaths vary wildly, and researchers have found it hard to agree on exactly how many people died of plague during the Black Death. The more liberal estimates range as high as 25,000,000 deaths in Europe (and claiming that the mortality rate in England was as high as 25%) and a similarly high total in the East
(Asia and India). In some cities, texts of the period (death registers, personal correspondence and journals, and historical fiction such as Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year) claims that as many as 60% of the population succumbed to the plague.
Unfortunately, there are many factors that limit how much credence modem researchers can lend to these estimates, some of which will be explored later in this chapter. As fascinating as the pursuit of the Black Death's buried or irretrievable facts are, I adopt a typical folklorist's approach. It works the same whether the topic is plague narrative or urban legend or folk belief: it matters little if the plague actually happened exactly as described, but it is extremely significant that people reacted to it in certain ways, remember it in certain ways, and behave in relation to it in certain ways today.
So how and when did plague ultimately make it to the British Isles? It was commuted from one area to another with the transport of goods and people through trade and migration. As we now know, bubonic plague is transmitted through the
45 exchange of blood between rat fleas and black rats. Black rats thrived in close
proximity to human communities in the especially favorable conditions of a growing
European social order centuries ago. They Lived in rural areas among peasants in
villages as successfully as in the dwellings of poor and w^ealthy city dwellers, although
the latter tended to have more resources available to keep rats at bay. For rats the rule
of thumb for human contact was "the closer the better." It was not uncommon for
dweUings of aU sizes and degrees of luxury to have rats about, especially in the filthy
urban locations of major European cities such as Florence, Paris, and London.
Where people went, the rats followed. Thus when populations in various world areas reached a certain density and when trade between these areas and others reached a firequency and volume to permit it,^^ the plague bacillus made its way from human population to hum an population carried by its black rat hosts (McNeil 165-66,199-216).
Although the rat flea was the actual vector for crossover infection between rats and humans, the rats that permeated human communities carried the fleas and plague ever wider as groups of humans reached outward from Asia, Africa, and Europe toward one another. They even travelled great distances over water in the holds of ships.
Fourteenth and seventeenth century medical insights into plague's causes were seriously flawed because physicians did not have the benefits of a m odem scientific understanding of biology and germ theory. They did, however, determine that the plague was a contagion spread in some way between victims who gathered in relatively close proximity. Unfortunately, the same basic empirical observations that led
Europeans to discern that plague appeared to be transmitted between humans as a contagion led them to draw false conclusions about how it was transmitted from person
46 In Plagues and Peoples, McNeil refers to peak population densities and trans-oceanic trade frequencies that could support the spread of plague among populations across several continents, pp. 165-166, 199-216.
46 to person and by whom. Instead of recognizing biological factors, they looked for social patterns and zeroed in on them with haste and vitriol. They identified factors genuinely shared by victims but which they were unable to know were not actually related to the nature of the epidemic. The errors—often fueled by a completely understandable desire to find meaning or even scapegoats for an uncontrollable problem—had grave repercussions for some social groups.
For example, as historian Sheldon Watts explains, the emerging upper classes of fourteenth century Europe began viewing working class people as "squalid, public, and sordid"—in general, as inferior and thus suspect. It was the result of deeply situated social and cultural developments cenhiries in the making. Watts observes that "it took only a short imaginative leap [for them] to conclude that the collective 'poor' were carriers of disease, and that plague itself is contagious, spread from person to person"
(15-18). Another short leap led to the belief that the undesirable classes were to be equated with risk of disease just as they were associated with social or moral failure:
"By force of circumstance, many poor people lived in flea-infested environments, in wood and thatch slums on the tuban fringe" (16). The poor were the cause of the problem and were thus part of the problem, as reprehensible and dangerous to the upper classes as the plague itself. It required only a small leap of thought to generate the conviction that the poor and other socially weak groups did not belong in the world of the privileged and powerful.
People in positions of power were influenced by this growing species of folk idea'^^ that targeted already disadvantaged groups. It contributed to a vicious circle that victimized the poor and other very specific groups. For example, physicians' and
47 Alan Dundes. 1971. Folk Ideas as Units of Worldview. Toioard New Perspectives in Folklore, ed. Americo Paredes and Richard Bauman. Special issue of Journal of American Folklore 84:93-103.
47 magistrates' general overwillingness to hastily record poor people's deaths as "plague
deaths"—whether they really died of plague or not—established a pattern through
which the poor appeeued to evidence a disproportionately high plague mortality rate.
The medical evidence appeared to confirm the upper class's conclusions. Thus a
framework for persecuting the poor and other "morally inferior" people was established
to be taken advantage of in different circumstances and with different scapegoats from
place to place or time to time. Philip Ziegler writes in The Black Death (1969) that w hen people "are overwhelmed by forces totally beyond their control and their understanding it is inevitable that they will search for some explanation within their grasp.'"*® He elaborates:
When they are frightened and badly hurt then they wUl seek someone on whom they C cin be revenged. Few doubted that the Blade Death was God's will but, by a curious quirk of reasoning, medieval man also conduded that His instruments were to be found on earth and that, if only they could be identified, it was legitimate to destroy them. What was needed, therefore, was a suitable target for the indignation of the people, preferably a minority group, easily identifiable, already unpopular, widely scattered and lacking any powerful protector. (97)
This is Ziegler's preamble to a discussion of the persecution of Jews in Europe in the time of plague. He notes that Jews topped most lists of the most feared groups in a very Christian Europe. Also feared and often persecuted in Europe as carriers of plague
(among other evils) were Arabs, pilgrims (suspidous because they w^ere transient and marginal to local sodeties), lepers, grave diggers, gypsies, prostitutes, and even the
Christian English (when seen from continental perspectives, of course). The fearful
48 There is excellent scholarship by folklorists engaging with this same prindple. The accusations that a group of people were guilty of spreading plague dehberately (presumably for social and personal gain) are typical for reactions among groups facing inexplicable dangers. Folklorists have recorded and analyzed the function of similar examples of conspiracy theories which tend to lay blame for perceived threats at the hands of sodal groups—dassic "others." See Patrida Turner "The Atlanta Child Murders: A Case Study of Folklore in the Black Community" (1991) and Cary Alan Fine "Welcome to the World of Aids: Fantasies of Female Revenge" (1987).
48 people of Europe embraced beliefs that groups they already saw as suspicious
contributed to the spread of plague.
Preventive Measures and the Generation of Public Health Systems in Europe
Social class, religion, and race were not the only factors that determined who
was believed to contribute to the propagation of plague. Because most physicians and
civic authorities believed that plague was related to harmful vapors or disgusting odors,
activities that involved such things were prohibited by law as a precautionary measure.
In Fighting the Plague in 17th Century Italy, Carlo CipoUa describes an edict in Pistoia,
Italy, that forbade the harvesting of sUk from silkworms. This very specific and
innocuous seeming prohibition was hastily adopted, but it had a significant domino
effect that sent vibrations through a much larger sphere of the Pistoian population.
Silkworms give off a strong odor and were, as CipoUa puts it, "regarded with suspicion"
(51-54) by the doctors and magistrates who searched for ways to apply controls against
the plague. Unfortunately, many people in and around Pistoia made their Uving harvesting sUk and manufacturing textiles from silken raw materials (as weU as from other labors prohibited locaUy, including grave digging and butchery, for similar cause).
Such protective measures hurt the local economy and understandably harmed the working people whose spare vocations or the materials they used were prohibited (53), impoverishing them further and placing them at even greater risk of plague or any number of other threats.
In the more advanced urban regions of Italy—Florence, Pisa, Genoa, and Pistoia especiaUy—and in other European locations later, people began to leam that there were ways to prevent the plague. Urban populations in the Mediterranean suffered terribly during the Black Death. Warnings of plague kicked protective mechanisms into gear.
The city states of Italy were highly organized, and they developed the first pubUc health
49 authorities in recorded history. Plague scholars seem to agree that Italy is to thank for
the creation of significant health ordinances designed to protect large populations in
tim es of m edical n eed (CipoUa 1977,1981; Slack 1985; Watts 1997). The plague, of course,
provided the ultimate platform for the city states to apply their codes and to leam from
them.
Philip Ziegler, a Black Death scholar and historian, describes the unusually
comprehensive public health practices put into place in Pistoia, Italy. He notes that
although the wealthy, clergy, and government officials tended to have more resources at
their disposal to help them against the plague, "the temptation to Church and State to
load the dice stall further in their favour was generally resisted" (55). The health plan
was surprisingly democratic in an otherwise highly stratified social environment.
Pistoia's nine-page civic ordinances document published in 1348^^ has been preserved,
and Ziegler translates emd paraphrases it:
No one was to visit the Pisan or Luccan states where the plague was already rampant. If such a visit were made then, even though the citizen had started his journey before the ordinances, his return to Pistoia was forbidden. No linen, woolen goods, or, not surprisingly, corpses, whatever their source, were to be imported into the town. Food markets were put under strict supervision. Attendance at funerals was to be limited to members of the farnily and standards were laid down for the place and depth of burials. To avoid disturbing the sick and also, no doubt, so as not to undermine the morale of the healthy, there was to be no tolling of beUs at funerals and no announcements by criers or trumpeters. (54-55)
Another set of ordinances, published almost three weeks later, lessened some of
Pistoia's proscriptions ageiinst travel because, as Ziegler points out, "the plague had now taken so firm a grip that any [heightened precautions against travel] would be futile." The civic and religious authorities in Pistoia, in Ziegler's opinion, "seem to have accepted their responsibilities towards the poorer sections of their populations and to
49 Alberto ChiappeUi. Gü ordinamenti sanitari del Comune de Pistoia contra la peste de 1348. Arch. stor. ital. Series IV(XX):3-24.
50 have done their inadequate best to shield them from disaster"(55). Sadly, the
ordinances did not prevent the plague from taking hold, but it stands to reason that they
did not hurt the general welfare in proportion to the risk of plague either. Furthermore,
the very valuable precedent of establishing and then standing by public health codes
was an idea that had come to stay.
The wiU and stzunina of leaders exhibited in Pistoia was by no means
characteristic of all leaders in Italy and elsewhere in Europe by the time the notion of
health ordinances had spread so far, as much as a century later.^° By the time the Black
Death had ended and Europe dropped into a general ease, other factors mitigated
against officials presenting the strong, organized front exhibited by the Pistoians in
1348.
Public health authorities in Italy and elsewhere based their policies on
contemporary beliefs about plague, focusing on transmission directly from person to person (or more precisely from vaporous sources to people) and delineated little
according to religion, wealth, status, vocation, and one's general well-being.®^ There was a notably laudable development even within this unfortunate framework, and it related
to the city-states' recognition that it was in the interest of the general public welfare to provide for the victims of plague and those whose livelihoods were disrupted circumstantially. That meant public aid, an ironic and progressive development, aU
50 Ziegler recommends an excellent study that describes the "apparent apathy" of the officials in Orvieto, Italy. They failed to react, for whatever reason, and researcher Elizabeth Carpentier speculates that Orvieto's mortality rate from plague could have been as high as fifty percent. (Carpentier. Une Ville devant la Peste. Orvieto et la Peste Noire de 1348.)
51 For a good example of what these city health ordinances were like, see Carlo CipoUa's translation of "The Instructions of the Health Board of Florence for Justices in the Countryside"— Instruzioni—printed in 1630. (CipoUa 1977, 87-98)
51 things considered. Sheldon Watts outlines the basic Italian model for plague control,
adopted generally in urban locations throughout Europe within one century later:
In a nutshell, full-blown Italian plague control consisted of five elements: (1) rigorous policing of human movement from plague-infected regions to those still plague free by the use of marine or land quarantine; (2) compulsory burial of the dead in special pits and the destruction of their personal possessions; (3) isolation of people sick with plague in pesthouses and the shutting up of their families in their own houses or in temporary cabins far from built-up areas; (4) assumption of responsibility by the local unit of taxation to provide free medical service and food to people placed in isolation; (5) provision of subsistence to those whose Livelihoods had been wrecked by the closure of markets and who had no food reserves to fall back on. (16-17).
It goes to show how remarkable this system was that the same basic procedures
are features of advanced social and medical practice in the industrialized world today.
In social terms, we even see shadows of Italy's model epidemic control procedures
today: one can hardly cross an international border today without being subjected to
scrutiny regarding one's purpose, one's character, one's possessions, and risking
quarantine of various sorts (either isolated in a room for questioning until deemed safe
or surrendering Living possessions for isolation until they are deemed infection free).
Although one might argue that these practices still exist partly as a result of tradition or
inherited prejudices, most would agree that they are sound procedures whose inconvenience is warranted by the risk that travellers will transport some sort of contamination from "there" to "here."
The practice of quarantining foreign vessels upon arrival in sea ports as a public means for protection against epidemics—plague included—is attributed by most researchers to the great coastal cities of Mediterranean Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (Watts, Carmichael 3,110-112). Writes Carlo CipoUa, in Faith,
Reason, and the Plague: A Tuscan Story of the Seventeenth Century: "During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the major states of central north Italy—specificaUy: Venice,
52 Milan, Genoa, and Florence—had developed a detailed organization of public health far in advance of the rest of Europe" (11). There are significantly detailed accounts of quarantine activities and policies in Venice, Florence, Pistoia, and in smaller locales such as the walled village of Monte Lupo (which CipoUa describes in Faith, Reason, and the
Plague) near to these cities. Quarantine was a response to medical and folk beliefs about how plague is communicated from one area to another.
Physicians and lay people who were plainly observzmt noticed that plague appeared to be brought to an area by people who had come from an infected place.
Believing that "it may lie dormant in the spirits or in the blood-vessels a very considerable time"(Defoe 197), coastal cities such as Venice and London enacted quarantine on ships, isolating the crew, passengers, and cargo just offshore for periods ranging from 22 to 40 days in an attempt to expire either the harmful vapors or their potential carriers (CipoUa 1977,12; Defoe 197). An interesting pubUc edict written three centuries later for Londoners was entitled "An aduice set downe by the CoUege of
Physici ns [sic], by his Maieshes spedaU Command. . . ." It was written by London physidan Francis Herring in 1636, and it prescribes the same procedure and dearly articulates the doctor's inspiration for the practice:
It is likewise necessary that there bee care taken, that neither men nor goods may come from any suspected places beyond the seas, or in the land, without certificate of health, or else either to bee sent suddenly away, or to be put to the pesthouse or some such Uke place for fourty dales (according to the custome of Italy) tUl the certainty of their soundness may be discovered. (Johnson 1979)
The practice of quarantine was readUy extended to homes when a victim turned up in one's family anywhere in a dty or viUage. Immediately upon identification of a victim, health regulations dictated that no one was to enter or exit from the infected domicile for a similar period.
53 Although the health codes in larger cities generally provided for food and other
needs of those quarantined, they were not always so well cared for. There are plenty of
horror stories of the healthy being boarded up with the sick and being offered no
comfort—medical, spiritual, or other. Such neglect compounded the already
overwhelming problems for officials responsible for imposing the health ordinances. In
Monte Lupo, for example, the poor who were literally boarded up into their hom es
revolted, spreading the plague and the added fear of social unrest throughout the village
and the outlying area. They ran with reckless abandon after having been essentially
buried alive by the governing authority (CipoUa 1977), further confirming the upper
classes' beliefs that the poorer classes were amoral and worthless to organized social
structures.
A concept similar to quarantine, the pesthouse must have been a cruel and
horrible fate. The pesthouse (as in pestilence house) was a holding tank, usually
isolated from the main population of a town or city. In them were kept people dying of plague, people suspected of being contaminated, and even those believed simply to be at
risk of being plague carriers. Although scholars today (including me) cite the victories of
government and compassion represented by the health codes, when push came to shove
in the face of an epidemic, things feU apart. The pesthouse and in-house quarantine were symptoms of this. They were places of death, and people loathed the idea that
they might be fingered for containment in one. In A Journal of the Plague Year, Daniel
Defoe rationalizes what must have be a prevailing sentiment toward the difficult and frightening policies:
It is true that the locking up the doors of people's houses, and setting a watchman there night and day to prevent their stirring out or any coming to them, when perhaps the sound people in the family might have escaped if they had been removed from the sick, looked very hard and cruel; and many people perished in these miserable confinements which, 'tis reasonable to believe, would not have been distempered if they had had liberty, though the plague was in the house; at which the people were very clamorous and uneasy at first, and several
54 violences were committed and injuries offered to the men who were set to watch the houses so shut up; also several people broke out by force in many places, as I shall observe by-and-by. But it was a public good that justified the private mischief, and there was no obtaining the least mitigation by any application to magistrates or government at that time, at least not that I heard of. This put the people upon all manner of stratagem in order, if possible, to get out; and it would fill a little volume to set down the arts used by the people of such houses to shut the eyes of the watchmen who were employed, to deceive them, and to escape or break out from them, in which frequent scuffles and some mischief happened; of which by it self. (47-48)
In spite of their lack of modem scientific insight, fourteenth and seventeenth century Europeans were surprisingly close to solving the mystery of the plague. And while the narrow misses did Europe's victims little good, they do illuminate cruel ironies.
For example, when one is faced with grave peril it is human instinct to flee, and that is exactly what floods of people did whenever rumor told that plague was near. Of coruse they scattered, sometimes bringing infected rat fleas with them or even left a place of relative safety only to seek shelter in a location that would be hit next. Daniel Defoe's^^ narrative account of the plague of London in 1665—one of the best-published narrative accounts of the London epidemic—illustrates a preventive measure that was actually undertaken in similar fashion by urban authorities in Italy and elsewhere^ in Europe when their cities were faced with plague:
52 Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year is a fictional account, written 57 years after the plague in London when Defoe himself was only 62. Defoe was a small child when the London suffered the plague, but it left him a lifetime of interest in plague and the conviction that the mass suffering of plague's victims should be recorded and personalized. Though fictional, his Journal is recognized as a remarkably accurate account of what happened in London during the plague and what people did to try to save themselves. It is credited with being "a classic of plague literature, worthy of comparison with Thucydides and Boccaccio" (Roberts i-ü). Philip Ziegler, in The Black Death, points out how consistent Defoe's work is with other plague literature: "The same phrases are used to describe the appearance of the disease, the same exaggerated estimates of mortality appear, the same passions are aroused, the same economic and social consequences ensue" (112).
53 See also CipoUa, Faith, Reason, and the Plague, pp. 11-12.
55 Wherefore were we ordered to kill all the dogs and cats, but because as they were domestic animals, and are apt to run from house to house and from street to street, so they are capable of carrying the effluvia or infectious streams of bodies infected even in their furs and hair? And therefore it was that, in the beginning of the infection, an order was published by the Lord Mayor, and by the magistrates, according to the advice of the physicians, that all the dogs and cats should be immediately kQled, and an officer was appointed for the execution. It is incredible, if their account is to be depended upon, what a prodigious number of those creatures were destroyed. I think they taUced of forty thousand dogs, and five times as many cats; few houses being without a cat, some having several, sometimes five or six in a house. All possible endeavours were used also to destroy the mice and rats, especially the latter, by laying ratsbane and other poisons for them, zmd a prodigious multitude of them were also destroyed. (121)
Of course the tragic twist is that by eradicating the domestic animals, they opened the door for an even greater tide of plague-infected rats to multiply freely and allowed them to roam through human quarters unmolested in spite of the traps and poisons set for th em .^
Plague in England
There is sketchy evidence of epidemic plague in England as early as the seventh century (Creighton 5-7), but one stands on shaky ground to speculate about what the cause or causes were. Some researchers think the early epidemics were bubonic plague, yet a relative balance of data suggests that it was not. The best it appears that we can say today is that there was certainly some great malady with grave repercussions in the
South of England zmd Northumbria around 653 (Creighton). Unfortunately, there is little evidence to identify the causes of any of the periodic famines and pestilences that hit Europe and England in the Dark and Middle Ages. On the contrary, data surviving
54 See Francis H erring's Certaine rules, directions or advertisements for this time of pestilentiall contagion (Mathew Simmons, London, 1636) for an example of how Londoners disseminated information about protection against the plague. It bears strong similarities to the ordinances of Italian states, and its commission is attributed to King Charles.
56 from the fourteenth century and later in the Mediterranean and Western Europe offers
relative certainty that bubonic plague was the major disease factor in the two great
pandemics that killed millions before it was eradicated in England by the eighteenth
century.
In 1349 the Black Death took hold of England. The outbreak was referred to as
"the pestilence" most commonly at the time, but it became known later as the Black
Death. However its contemporaries referred to it, the plague was a paralyzing and
terrifying thing to behold, both for its cruel and deadly symptoms and for the
atmosphere of helplessness and terror which preceded its onset in any community or
household. By some estimates, it had already killed as many as one-third of continental
Europe's population before it arrived in England. It caused tremors in the continent's
and England's social, economic, and religious structures.
Once the plague had crossed from Europe into the British Isles, producing at first
the Black Death, plague became endemic. That is, it remained dormant in some places, subjecting local populations to periodic recurrences as regularly as every decade or so.
Christopher Morris^^, King's College Fellow and historian, argues that the 1665 epidemic known as the Great Plague of London "may only have been .. . the third most destructive of the city's last five great outbreaks (1563, 1593, 1603, 1625, 1665)" (37).
We w l U. probably never know which London outbreak really was the deadliest. But the obvious pattern of endemic disease was significant for Hfe in London at the time, and it was the same for the rest of England and even Scotland and Ireland. Although plague- related data and literature concerning England is concentrated mostly on London's experience, there is information concerning the breadth of its spread into the North.
55 Morris, Christopher. 1977. Plague in Britain. The Plagiie Reconsidered: A Nezo Look at Its Origins and Effects in 16th and 17th Century England, Local Population Studies. Matlock: Derbyshire, England, 37-48.
57 Evidence shows that the Black Death (1348), the Great Plague (1664), and
cyclical localized epidemics between them occurred all over England, Scotland, and
Ireland. Outside of London, hardly a region or town was spared, from Cornwall to the
Highlands. In the North Midlands, the area around York which includes Yorkshire and
Derbyshire (the county in which Eyam village is located), plague established itself
endemically. North Midland towns and villages suffered periodic outbreaks, the records
and details of which are scant today; however, it is worth mentioning that even in
Derbyshire, Eyam was not by any means the only village to suffer a plague outbreak; nor
was it, according to some estimates, the community that suffered the most plague
deaths. Also hit by the plague were the town of Ashbourne (1605), the cities of
Chesterfield (1588,1603) and Birrningham (1665), and many more villages, including
Curbar (1632) which sits just one mile from Eyam along the valley floor (Daniel 1994,
43-48).
Derby, the major Derbyshire population center and market town, suffered
outbreaks in 1586, 1592, 1636, and 1665—the same year of the famous plague episode at Eyam. Clarence Daniel, a famous chronicler of Derbyshire plague events and author of several of the primary accounts of the Eyam plague, quotes an uncited source that describes the scene in Derby in 1665^^:
"The town was forsaken: the farmers declined the marketplace, and grass grew upon the spot on which the necessaries of Hfe had been sold. To prevent a famine, the inhabitants erected a stone a Httle way out of town for the purpose of exchange." The stone mentioned was the Headless Cross which is now in the Arboretum. Money was rinsed in the vinegar-filled hollow of this stone. As a precaution against infection, tradesmen chewed tobacco, while prospective
56 It is often frustrating to conduct research based on histories and guides written by amateur English historians such as Clarence Daniel, John CHfford, and W illia m W ood, all recognized authorities on Eyam’s plague. They regularly decline to document the sources of their quotations and information. This is not a failing that harms the worth or appeal of their writings, nor does it suggest that they are suspect by default. It does, however, threaten to thwart institutional humanities scholarship that depends upon meticulous citation for reHabüity emd to aid in conducting further resear<±i.
58 customers were not allowed to handle goods unless they intended to make a purchase. When a transaction was completed, the purchasers placed their money in vessels filled with vinegar. (Daniel 1994, 45)
In addition to showing the unspecified author's original lament, Daniel mentions the
transaction stone practice. Believing that vinegar (or sometimes plain water) would
remove the contaminants and vapors from objects, people routinely exchanged and paid
for goods using this technique. Just as the Italians had done, the English realized that surviving the plague meant more than prayer and the mere avoidance of others. Survival still depended on economic exchange, and they adopted tools like the transaction stone
that they believed protected them. Eyam had at least tv\>^o exchange sites which figure prominently in the village's surviving plague narrative, to be discussed in later chapters.
The Black Death took hold of England which fared no better than other highly populated regions of the world. Once the plague became endemic, all of the British Isles suffered off and on for the next three and one-half centuries. The last recorded outbreak of plague in England was in 1671. There are a number of factors that could explain why the disease disappeared then, most related to the general improvement of health policies and sanitary conditions or to the decline of the black rat population^^ which was the plague's most prolific mode of transport. Aside from a small number of people who point to highly localized and mysterious deaths (which other scholars attribute to more likely non-plague diseases such as anthrax or tuberculosis), England and Europe were finally free of the great pestilence that had killed minions, changed society, and influenced culture dramatically.
57 John Clifford cites unspecified sources and explains that by the late seventeenth century, the brown rat population (which competes with the black rat population) had propagated sufficiently to remove black rats firom the human contact they had once enjoyed, placing people at much reduced risk of contact with infected black rats and rat fleas (personal interview, August 16,1997).
59 The Plague, the Anglican Church, and Lasting Changes in English Life
Interested in the plague's effects on the English church and religion, W illia m J.
Dohar explains that "medieval Christians viewed the pestilence in ways that were
essentially religious" and that the theology of the time had "consistently stressed the
interrelationship of physical infirmity with the condition of the soul" (3). Thus, if one's
body is afflicted with a horror as vivid as the Black Death, how dire must be the malady
of the spirit within? Dohar quotes Archbishop Zouche of York who offers a
contemporary appraisal of the meaning of the plague: "As human life on earth is
warfare," the archbishop writes,
there is little wonder that those who wage war on the miseries of this world are
sometimes disturbed by uncertain events, at times favorable, at others adverse.
For Almighty God at times allows those he loves to be chastised since, by an
outpouring of spiritual grace, strength is made perfect in infirmity. Therefore,
who does not know what great death, pestilence and infection of the air hangs
about various parts of the world and especially England these days. This indeed
is caused by the sins of people who, caught up in the delights of their prosperity,
neglect to remember the gifts of the Supreme Giver.^
To the Christians of England and Europe, the Black Death was first and
foremost a spiritual problem. From an individual's point of view, this held that one's
dire illness is the result of inadequate commitment to God and Church and is thus deserved and unavoidable. It is not surprising, then, that religious leaders believed that
thorough devotion to Christian belief and penitential observance of Christian behavior
58 j. Raine, ed. 1873. Historical Papers from the Northern Registers, RoUs Series. London: Longman, 395-97.
60 were the best and only true protections against the plague. In addition to notions that it was the individual's responsibility for cleansing his or her own soul, there are records of group activities managed by churches for the same purpose.
For example. Bishop William Edington of Winchester ordered monks of his cathedral to lead "penitential processions" of people "barefoot and with heads bowed through the marketplace of the cathedral dty, fasting, and redting as often as possible the Pater Noster and Ave" (Dohar 5). Describing Edington's and other bishops' processional and mass activities, Dohar adds that the people were all to partidpate patiently and for the duration of the events. The spiritual faults for which plague infection was believed to be punishment (or evidence) could be mitigated by earnest observation and partidpation in the activities of the Church. This belief had serious consequences for the withering dergy during the plague. It later resulted in more general dissatisfaction across England with the Church's inability to summon divine intervention successfully in time of crisis such as the plague (Dohar 3-10).
In theory, cure depended on as little as proper penance and faith. Remember that affliction was believed (in the chiurch's eyes) to be the result of some sin or spiritual flaw, so salvation rested in the ability to right the wrong. The tantalizing theorem "when the cause is removed the effect will pass away" (Dohar 4) jangled at the frantic millions of people who faced the plague and desperately turned to their beliefs and the Church's representatives for help, many certainly becoming more devout as the pestilence advanced. When Christian devotion and ritual observance and prayer didn't provide evidence of protection, some people sought rescue through flight. Many looked for other explanations and relationships between portents and beliefs that weren't necessarily
Christian in nature. Desperate, they searched for any and aU things as explanations—comets, unusual political occurrences, even personal morcil failings—that could point to possible cures. People did not always abandon their faith entirely, but
61 they certainly opened their minds to possibilities not accounted for by their Christian
leaders. They were neither interested in pinning their hopes on one possibility nor in
abandoning any others.
The fact that very few victims survived once symptoms of plague developed
(providing conclusive proof of spiritual crisis in the eyes of the Church) was registered by the Church matter of factly and sadly. It was viewed as evidence of the population's
general poor spiritual condition in the eyes of God. When it came down to it, however,
the Church was as powerless and at as great a loss for a solution to the plague as any
other governing authority.
The English people were extremely dependent upon their clergy for a great many
things in the fourteenth century, especially for their moral and spiritual guidance of course. The only true agents of protection and intervention against a spiritual crisis were the archbishops, bishops, parish priests, and other members of the clergy stationed throughout England in the Church's organizational structure. When the plague set upon an area, men, women, and children saw their friends, family, clergy, magistrates, and
(through the cruel nature of bubonic plague) often saw themselves rotting alive before dying swiftly and painfully. People quickly turned to their clergy for help, comfort, and intervention.
The churchmen themselves, however, were especially susceptible to plague because of the social and ritual requirements of their offices. The clergy, much more human than some of them wanted to admit, were subject to panic and the instinct to flee as were other people, and some did abandon their congregations. Those who remained formd their own numbers alarmingly dirriinished, in some cases with a much greater mortality rate than their constituents (Dohar 1995; Cipolla 1979,1981). Because the plague sent death and illness rates through the roof, the clergy's reduced numbers were spread precariously thin among those who called for attention in villages, towns, and cities. The
62 religions institutional system had an increasingly difficult time meeting its obligations to
the Living, the dying, and the increasing numbers of recently dead—a branch of service
that was, to say the least, at a premium during the terrible epidemic.
A profound by-product of this shortage in the supply of people qualified to
minister to the dead and dying was that the general population began losing their faith
in their ministers' powers to make sense of this—any— deadly crisis and to protect
them from it. According to Dohar, this shortage and lack of effectiveness on the part of
the clergy led to a significant shift and diminishment in the role of the church in parishes and smaller population centers across England during the following three hundred years.
People were told—and they picked up through their own observations anyway—that plague was transmitted firom person to person in groups that gathered together. That put a serious cramp in the practice of churchgoing, and people grew unwilling to gather in their congregations during plague outbreaks, and that included the clergy too who were every bit as mortal and fearful as their worshippers.
Unlike the Italian cities of the fourteenth century which forged innovative health protection codes administered by civil leaders and the clergy together, religious leaders were often the only local authorities of any kind in many English parishes by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It became priests' and rectors' responsibility to adrninister whatever protective measures their communities could muster against the plague. Holy days and festivals normally presided over by parish ministers went unobserved. Many of the sick and dying got no attention from their clergy who had either died or fled in panic. Dohar refers to peoples' intensified need for spiritual guidance and comfort as "an unbounded anxiety over what further destruction the plague might exact before it was fully spent" (37-38). Unfortunately, the clergy had little on their side to comfort an already dispirited tlock. Dohar also mentions what
63 may have been the most damaging factor for the clergy's long-term position among the
English people in the centuries after the Black Death:
There were the seemingly contrary images of God's vengeance against a sinful race and the preacher's adjuration to confessing sins to a God of mercy. In years after, pastors would also need to contend with the enduring bitterness of survivors who marveled less at the wrath of God and more at the impotence of the church and its ministers to placate God. (37)
What had been a population of several clergy in most parishes at the time of the Black
Death—even the very rural ones—was reduced to one or even none for some parishes by
the last great epidemic in 1665-1666. Although some researchers still debate the relative influences of a diminished clergy population versus the peoples' reluctance to support so many practitioners in an expensive institutional structure, the church never recovered its influence over and reach into its parishes.
The Church was not the only component of the social fabric to shift and change as a result of the plagues in England. "Death," Dohar writes, "was the most impressive of the plague's effects, but it was not the only one. Changes in households, local communities, and society as a whole radiated from the direct and mortal effects of the epidemic to produce a complex of disruption and change" (3). William McNeil refers to plague's influence on society and culture rather simply as the "disruptive effect" of an epidemic. He measures its stun to be "greater than the mere loss of life"and expands on the observation by stating what is probably obvious to most who reflect seriously on the plague: "Often survivors are demoralized, and lose all faith in inherited custom and belief which had not prepared them for such a disaster.... Indeed, any commimity that loses a substantial percentage of its young adults in a single epidemic finds it hard to maintain itself materially and spiritually" (69). Together, smaller recurrent epidemic episodes of plague, not just the Black Death, had significant impact on the institutions, worldviews, and ways of Hfe in England and Europe.
64 Although the full extent to which it had such impact is still argued today, the
plague did noticeably disrupt everything from population densities, methods of
production, and trade patterns to (as discussed earlier) spiritual faith and the
institutions that catered to it. A passage from Charles F. Mullett's The Bubonic Plague
and England (1956) summarizes the different ways in which the cataclysmic epidemic
had in a disruptive effect on almost all aspects of Hfe:
The Black Death itself everywhere produced the most diverse effects. Its appalling mortality encouraged dissipation and asceticism, persecution and indifference. Wars were thrown off, trade and agricultiue disrupted, and government suspended. Love, trust, and faithfulness took flight, and the patient was forsaken by all except his dog. Neither his nearest and dearest nor his priest and physician dared visit him. Diabolism flourished as persons paid homage to the devil, and sorcerers abounded. Flagellation, choreomania, and children's pilgrimages conspicuously reflected current neuroses. Jews, as might be expected, were brutally massacred when charges of ritual murder and the deliberate distribution of a plague poison gained wholesale credence.59 Ahectic and hysterical disregard for moral standards, reaching to excessive sexuality and cannibalism, manifested the disintegrating blight on European civilization. (15)
Although MuUett employs some rather subjective and suspect appraisals of what
constitutes "excessive sexuality," "moral standards," and a "disintegrating blight," he
does compose a theatrical image of the far-reaching social consequences of a terrifying
and deadly epidemic. The piles of evidence available today—literary, artistic, legal,
trade, medical, and folkloric—show that bubonic plague was more than just an efficient
killer.
59 Here Mullet has inserted his own footnote which reads: "Not in England; Jews had been expelled in 1290, and the few who remained aroused no animosity." I myself would like to add that accusations that a group of people were guilty of spreading plague dehberately (presumably for social and personal gain) are typical reactions among groups facing inexplicable dangers. FolWorists have recorded and analyzed the function of similar examples of conspiracy theories which tend to lay blame for perceived threats at the hands of social groups—classic "others." See Patricia Turner "The Atlanta Child Murders: A Case Study of Folklore in the Black Community" (1991) and Gary Alan Fine "Welcome to the World of Aids: Fantasies of Female Revenge" (1987).
65 Oxford University's George A. Holmes writes, in The Later Middle Ages, 1272-
1485, that "A few single events in English history have been both sudden and enormously important": the battles of Hastings and Saratoga, which led to the imposition of one governmental structure and the loss of another, respectively, and the
Black Death were all such enormously important events (136). In fact, there is a rich body of scholarship ranging from England and Europe to Russia and North America that qualifies the Black Death as a watershed occurrence—"one of the epoch-making events" (Bowsky 3)®°—in European social, economic, and religious history. According to some scholars of the plague's effects in England, the Black Death at least facilitated the trend toward the Reformation.®^ Statistical and narrative evidence®- has convinced scholars in many diverse fields that the series of plague outbreaks in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Western Europe were together a major agent of social and political change.
Holmes is but one among many 20th century scholars to join the voices of oral tradition that compare the Black Death to war. James Westfall Thompson, in a 1921 issue of The American Journal of So cio loargues g y, this particular point directly. He observes that the general "complaints" of World War 1 victims (which includes survivors) were remarkably similar to those of victims of the Black Death: "economic
60 Wfilitun M. Bowsky. 1971. The Black Death: A Turning Point in History? New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, p. 3.
61 See George A. Holmes (1962), Harry A. Miskimin (1969), Ann G. Carmichael (1986), and especially George G. Coulton (1929).
62 Nohl (1969), Twigg (1984), Benedictow (1992), Carmichael (1986), Dohar (1995), and Bowsky (1971).
63 Thompson, James Westfall. 1921. The Aftermath of the Black Death and the Aftermath of the Great War. The American Journal of Sociology 26:565-572.
6 6 chaos, social imrest, high prices, profiteering, depravation of morals, lack of production,
industrial indolence, frenetic gaiety, wild expenditure, luxury, debauchery, social and
rehgious hysteria, greed, avarice, maladministration, decay of manners" (566). While
some of Thompson's observations seem to suggest cultural bias on his part—"decay of
manners" and "depravation of morals" especially—there is ample historical evidence to
uphold his general assertion that the Black Death had as great an impact on the
populations, cultures, economies, and institutions of England as has any war between
peoples before or since.
While it appears that dissecting war metaphors do illustrate some relevant
points, especially in terms of plague's scope and significance, it strikes me as an exercise
that functions more to locate the tragedies in a similar space for emotional or historical
memory. Notice that the terms through which the war metaphor is articulated carry
subjective biases generally inconsistent with other modem plague scholarship ("decay,"
"morals," "depravation," "gaiety"). This particular brand of scholarly expression concerning the plague is not terribly useful to folklorists as far as the raw data is concerned, but the manner of interpretation and the form of conclusions is extremely interesting. As this chapter has illustrated, the plague was one of the most important factors in shaping social, political, religious, and economic structures throughout
England, Europe, and the rest of the epidemic's range.
67 CHAPTERS
EYAM'S SYMBOUC LANDSCAPE
This chapter examines the village as a historical document that preserves and performs the plague narrative while simultaneously anchoring a dynamic, complex community that can't possibly be contained within the symbolic limits of the same narrative. It is a precarious balance. The community is full of people with different opinions or—perhaps as untenable in a political sense—no opinions at all about the village's historicity. Many are deeply invested financially, emotionally, and professionally in the preservation of Eyam for one purpose or another. Others are just as deeply invested in activities zmd lifestyles that are considered to be antithetical to the village's historical representation. Therein lies the conflict: How can Eyam thrive as a natural community that changes independently of any plan and at the same time as an artifact or document which people expect to consume in preserved form? This chapter will illustrate the strange particulars of how a living village can also be a museum piece, at least for a while.
The Purported Immutability of Objects
Folklorist Henry Glassie once wrote that "The most useful artifacts are tenacious, situated, and complex."^ Known first and best for his folkloristic studies of material
64 In Henry Glassie's "Folkloristic Study of the American Artifact: Objects and Objectives," p. 377.
6 8 forms of expression, and especially folk architecture, Glassie offered his observation in
order to promote the study and judicious valuation of ''material remains"— artifacts—by
folklorists who had until then defined their field almost entirely by examining verbal and behavioral forms. He argues that whereas oral tradition and other intangible forms of
foUdore^^ are subject to variation over time and place, material expressions persist in
their original forms. Although he correctly refers to significant limitations inherent in the interpretation of texts^^, he wrongfully diminishes the merits of oral historical and classic literary folkloristic methods in favor of the study of material forms. Artifacts, he says, are different because they have material stability. Glassie suggests how folklorists and historians may avoid the interpretive pitfalls one faces while analyzing non-material
(and highly changeable) expressions:
The answer is to encounter the direct cultural expressions of past people, even though this means, in general, facing nonverbal documents, things Uke broken pots and old houses, and making them the central documents of history. Literally, artifacts persist through time. You cannot hear a medieval song or a colonial sermon, but you can touch a medieval reliquary and walk within a colonial church. (377)
This is all true, and any person interested in the past can share in the specific pleasures of experiencing a place or feeUng and seeing an object. Unfortunately, Glassie missed the ultimate conclusion that if the objective is interpretation and analysis, material folklore, artifacts, "direct remains"—whatever one calls them—are entirely subject to the same laws of bias and perspective as are oral historical and folk-Hterary texts. In other words, while the matter of some objects may not change drastically in variable contexts, their meanings and use could vary just as greatly as the most radically different
65 Especially genres such as folk behefs, folk ideas, behaviors, etc.
66 Including the great variability and fragility of verbal media such as books, epistles, ledgers, and especially oral tradition.
69 oikotypes of verbal forms. Although Glassie's early work was (and remains) highly
influential, from today's perspective it is a highly romantic approach to material culture.
Folklorist and vernacular architecture scholar (and former student of Glassie's)
Michael Ann Williams has pointed scholars in a different direction through her work
concerning social and symbolic uses of dwelling structures. like Glassie, WiUiams
makes great use of the understanding that material forms—housing structures in her
case—are expressive as well as functional products of people situated in specific and
changing cultural contexts. She strongly advocates observing the social, cultural, and
other intangible dimensions of otherwise tenacious and tangible objects in order to trace
and understand their changing uses and meanings:
If we are to "read" buildings as cultural artifacts, we need to understand as fully as possible the complex relationship of how buildings are used, socially and symbolically, and how buildings are physically constructed, altered, preserved, or destroyed. (3)
Although material forms may be relatively tenacious and static in and of themselves,
they are anything but fixed in any singular, essential historical or cultural matrix.
Indeed, artifacts of any nature can and should be treated as texts in the sense that the
task of interpretation necessarily demands a respect for context and reflexivity
(Bauman), two critical components neglected in Glassie's early approach to material
culture.
While artifacts such as houses, stone walls, or even graveyards may survive over many years, they are not frozen in time along with aU things and people around them; nor are the uses to which objects are put necessarily consistent over their useful lives.
Dan Ben-Amos pointed out that one of the basic axioms of folklore studies is that cultural expressions exhibit continuity and change over time and space, and this holds true for material objects as much as it does for non-material forms. Although a structure
70 or landscape element may be solid, relatively unchanging, and static in a material sense, how and why people make use of it and to what ends still aU fail the fixity test. Even the enterprise of interpreting nearly immutable objects obeys the well-established rule of
"ethnographic allegory" introduced by James Clifford in 1986. Any interpretation— scholarship and research included—expresses at least as much about the expectations and perspectives of the interpreter as it reveals about the object. In fact, as Clifford would probably agree, we can never really know where the interpretive balance rests. To borrow Glassie's words one more time and manipulate him into an agreement with
Clifford, Glassie usefully observed that the interpretive practice "teUs more about its tellers than about its historical subjects" (377). Understanding any intangible or tangible artifact's meaning or function is predicated on the understanding that any cultural expression—artifact, behavior, idea, whatever—is dynamic as a rule. There are a number of forces at work attempting to keep Eyam stable as though it were a material object. There is a terrific tension inherent in this process because, obviously, Eyam is not just a matericil object. It is every bit a natural, chzmging, unpreprogrammed human community that inhabits a physical and conceptual space over which there are great struggles for control.
This is certainly true in the case of Eyam, a focal point for infinitely variable personal and cultural expressions just Hke any community. Yet because of specific circumstances (explained in chapters five and six), Eyam village is experienced as a material artifact and a complex 0/ artifacts to a degree much more pronounced than most communities. Because this is so, Eyam is also subjected to a kind of wear and tear—materially and conceptually—that is very different from what most communities experience, and it bears the marks. Through its physical presence and a managed presentation of itself, Eyam carries the related burdens of representing significant
71 aspects of English local and national culture while stiU moving forward as a changeable, complex, present-day "living" community.
Eyam Village
One hundred eighty miles north of London, in the region known as the North
Midlands, is the county Derbyshire. Less famous to Americans than the much larger neighboring county of Yorkshire, Derbyshire has a terrain characterized by high, rolling hills with cover varying from dense deciduous forests to bleak white and dark moors.
The largest city is Derby, the county seat and administrative hub. The northeastem- most portion of the county is where moorland begins. It stretches upward into Yorkshire and the Pennine mountains, providing rugged scenery that is scarcely interrupted all the way north through Scotland and the Highlands. Eyam is located in this part of
Derbyshire.
Approaching Eyam by road—either from Sheffield, Chesterfield, or
Manchester—one leaves whatever moderate highway thoroughfare has taken him or her there and follows a narrowing track up over steep ridges and then down again. Hidden in a deep, narrow trough below the crown of Eyam Moor and an opposing Hope Valley ridgehne, Eyam straddles its single street for the length of a mile before ending at a narrow pass leading to low roUing dales at the south. Though less than one mile off the nearest highway, Eyam is effectively isolated from the daily traffic on the roads.
Travellers easily pass by without knowing that there is a community over the ridge.
There is no vantage point to offer so much as a glimpse of the village until the onlooker is already well wdthin and below the rim of the moor and out of sight of the nearest thoroughfares. This is the sort of place that must have helped to inspire fantastic stories about the vanishing villages of Germelshausen and Brigadoon.
72 Eyam's isolation or separation from the rest of the world is symbolic in many
ways, but it begins with the geographic. One can hardly go to Eyam without venturing
there deliberately; it is not a place one stumbles on by accident. Thus when the plague
arrived or, perhaps more significantly, when we think back on the plague's arrival there
several centuries ago, there is a temptation to see the calamity as less than random. Or
at least it is satisfying to see it as compellingly ironic. The vast majority of writers
lending their attention to the village for one reason or another by painting a picture of
Eyam's romantic and significant location in this hilly and desolate region. In the words
of poet Samuel Roberts, Eyam is "a little mountain city, an insulated Zoar." There are
many lengthy and impassioned treatises on this quality of the village. William Andrews,
in his 1891 w ork Old Church Lore, describes what he and other writers have considered
to be the irony of Eyam's geographic isolation and the appearance of plague there:
The plague penetrated into the most unexpected places. Far away from London [where the plague had been laying waste for some time already], in the Peak of Derbyshire, is the deHghtfuUy-situated mountain village of Eyam, a place swept over by health-giving breezes. It is a locality of apparent security against infection. (170)
John Clifford, a self-made Eyam expert and historian living in the village today, remarks
on the surprising isolation of the village:
Tucked away behind the hills that form Middleton Dale about twelve miles along the road from Chesterfield to Manchester via Chapel-en-le-Frith lies the village of Eyam. Even today one can easily miss the finger post pointing to the right up the steep and wooded valley of Eyam Dale, about half a mile out of the village of Stoney Middleton on the A 623. (1995 1)
Clarence Daniel, in The Story of Eyam Plague and a Guide to the Village (1977), provides another typical description of the most celebrated characteristics of Eyam's situation.
He enlarges his description to suggest a cultural significance out of proportion with the village's population and geographic dislocation:
73 Situated about 800 ft. above sea-level, the village of Eyam writhes like a serpent of stone cottages at the foot of Sir William Hill (1,419 ft.), sometimes called the "last mountain in the Pennine Range". Bit by bit it has been carved from the ridge of sandstone hills about the village, or from the dales which cleave the limestone upon which it stands. It is a village with roots lying deep in the soils of antiquity. Its most venerable monument is the Saxon Cross around which men first gathered to hear the sacred story told by those missionaries who followed wherever the proud Roman eagle had been planted by military conquest. And it is quite probable that men worshipped within its shadow^/ before a church had been raised in Eyam and dedicated to the worship of God. Therefore, the ancient cross is the discarded chrysalis of the Christian faith in Eyam, and remains as a memorial to the forgotten architects who influenced and moulded early religious thought, and laid the foundations upon which the greatness of Britain was built. (5)
Framing his introduction this way, Daniel has illustrated the village's geographical
marginality but has also elevated Eyam's significance to extend far beyond the limits of
the plague experience. He connects it with narratives, beliefs, and history on a more
national scope (this will be explored in a later chapter). A familiar old saying suggests
that just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. Likewise, just because Daniel, Clifford, Andrews, and other celebrants may be proudly fatuous of
Eyam's historical significance doesn't mean that the village does not have a genuinely
long and interesting history. In fact, Eyam still bears evidence of an ancient and varied—if not continuous—settlement pattern, easily stretching back into the centuries
long before the Norman Conquest.
On Eyam Moor just above the village, there is a druidic stone circle known as
Wet Withens. It consisted at one time of sixteen upright stones within a low, circular mound of earth. William Wood, writing in 1848, marveled at the circle and claimed that
"The still existing Druidical temple, or circle, on that part of the moor called Wet- withins, is even now very perfect, and frequently visited" (18). Unfortunately, only
67 This 8th century Saxon cross was not originally located in Eyam but was rather transported to the yard of St. Lawrence Parish Church in the seventeenth century for display.
74 three stones remained upright by this century, leaving it very difficult to see. Some archaeologists and historians have speculated that Wet Withins, like the 100 or so other stone circles found in the North Midlands, was built by the druids for use as a sacred site or astronomical tool as early as 1500 B.C. In the 19th century, Eyam boys discovered a large um within the tumulus, containing burnt bones, a flint arrow head, and other items pointing to prehistoric origin. Another piece of evidence—a linguistic relic—suggests that there was druidic activity in and around Eyam. In the middle of the village, just 200 yards from the church, is a strip of land leading down a hill. It is known as "Toothill" and, according to Clarence Daniel, local tradition claims that it is so named because the ridge was once a druidic site for the worship of Teutates or Tuisti, the Celtic god of war whose name survives as "Tuesday" in modem English (1977 26).
Geographic, artifactual, and linguistic evidence of the vicinity's Iron Age, Roman,
Saxon, Viking, and Norman periods abounds. An Early Iron Age fort is perched atop
Mam Tor, the tallest peak in the area, near Castleton.^® It appears to have gone out of use by the sixth century B.C. (Coombs 1977; Hart 73), and there is little information available about who built the fort and against whom it offered protection.
Archaeological evidence of Roman settlement in the region much later is still under investigation today. Not far from Eyam was a first century Roman fort known as Navio at Brough-on-Noe. Situated on a strategically significant ridgetop, Navio commanded a view of much of the Hope Valley and could control activity on at least five roads crossing through the region (Deame). Other indications of local Roman occupation include one of the many ancient Roman roadways that ran past Eyam and is stUl in use
68 Some Eyam- and Derbyshire-centered literature boasts that there is evidence of Bronze Age fortification in the area, but as far as can be certain this probably refers to the Mam Tor fort. It is the oldest fort discovered in the vicinity. The most recent and thorough archaeological research places it in the Iron Age.
75 today (Hey 18-27). Known simply as the Roman Road, it crosses Eyam Moor between
Hathersage in one direction and Tideswell in the other.
Eyam Moor still bears the structural remains of two lead mines, an industry
brought to the region by Roman occupational forces. PHny the Elder, in Natural History
(A.D. 77), refers to uncannily productive lead veins and mines in the Roman-occupied
Pennines. Lead mining was conducted in force in Derbyshire no later than the time of
Hadrian, early in the second century (Raistrick & Jennings 1-4). Lead rnining proved to be a venture so productive in Derbyshire that it long outlasted Roman rule there. Eyam itself became famous for the "Great Eyam Edge vein" in 1717 and the important Glebe and Ladywash Mines which supported an imusually complex and powerful network of miners, owners, and traders by the 19th century. This network grew so powerful that
King John (while still Count of Mortain) granted the area around Eyam a special
Liberty—or legal jurisdiction—"with its own code of laws which differed in many particulars from the others affecting the King's field" (Raistrick & Jennings 180-181;
Kirkham 1968, 43-45). Known as the Barmote Court, this Liberty convened every three weeks at the Miner's Arms pub in Eyam where the group still meets today, albeit mostly for social purposes. Economic recessions compounded by increased costs for extracting lead from mines that had grown very deep and filled with water forced the closures of
Glebe and Ladywash Mines by 1937. The lead mining industry in and around Eyam had ground to an eventual halt.
Saxon activity in the area is evidenced by a great Saxon cross now at Eyam, dating from around the 7th or 8th century. Although the cross's history is sketchy, it was probably found on Eyam Edge (the precipitous drop ÿ to the village from Eyam
Moor) and was brought into Eyam in the seventeenth century, finally preserved and placed upright in the churchyard sometime in the following 100 years. Architectiual remains beneath some structures in the village also originated in the same pre-conquest
76 period. According to architectural historian Nikolas Pevsner, parts of St. Lawrence
Parish Church's current structure date at least to the 13th century Norman period, but
the church's foundations appear to have belonged to a much earlier structure (possibly
12th century Saxon) most likely of a sacred nature (Pevsner, Turner).
In spite of the fact that the village's narrow valley and high moor served as the crossroads for people in many different groups over two millennia and more, there is no evidence of continuous settlement in Eyam until the fourteenth century (Batho; Wood
30). Eyam has been known to many different cultures, and post-conquest documentary evidence reveals that even the village's name has exhibited continuity and change.
Eyam's name is the source for a great deal of speculation and low-level controversy.
William Wood observes that "in the Norman survey" (the Domesday Book, 1086) the name is written Aiune. Other sources from the 13th through 16th centuries list the name as variously as Ayiim, Aium, Aihum, Eyghiim, Eyhum, Eyom, Eyam, an d Eam(e).^^ The
English Place-Name Society (1959) has taken the position that eyam is from egicm w hich
"probably means 'land between the streams'," referring to Hollow Brook and Jumber
Brook which flank the parish on two sides (92). Alternative (undocumented) interpretations for the etymology of Eyam focus on the second syllable's reference to a hamlet or "ham." Wood himself prefers Auine and argues that Ey or Ea must have referred to the superfluity of water in the village's earth: "There is no doubt, that the word means water or water-place" (4-6).
By 1588 the village had already placed itself into English history books—if only as a footnote—by commissioning and implementing one of the first public water works systems in the British Isles. Taking advantage of the plentiful water supply far below
Eyam, the Parish Council accepted a plan proposed by Colonel Francis Bradshaw to
69 The Place-Names of Derbyshire, Part 1, page 92. The English Place-Name Society.
77 create no fewer than five public water supply points. Water was conducted by pipes from springs to sandstone troughs. At Water Lane near the heart of Eyam, there were three troughs, one of which provided soft water for washing and two of which provided drinking water.^° At least three of the \’illage''s troughs were built expressly for horses and herd animals. One very low trough on Church Street is said to have been established in consideration of dogs who, naturally, get thirsty too (Granville Lowe, personal interview).
In addition to lead niining, quarrying, and agriculture, several other industries have supported the families of Eyam over the past two hundred years.^^ In the middle of the 18th century, two cotton spinning factories opened in the village, but the industry waned after the introduction of the power loom. These same mills were soon adapted for the purpose of sük weaving early in the 19 th century, and this industry supported many members of the parish who wove, who transported goods, and who kept the books for the booming business. The silk industry dedined by the middle of this century, and the twice-used mills were converted for a third purpose: shoe making. The last of the shoe factories dosed in 1979, unable to compete with larger firms using newer materials and fabrication techniques.
Eyam Parish is a large parish, consisting of the village of Eyam as well as the much smaller villages of Foolow and Eyam Woodlands to the west and Grindleford to the east. Although Eyam was quite marginal overall in terms of regional politics, at one time it offered its rector one of the most lucrative Livings in all of England. When the
70 Eyam Village Society. 1988. "A 400 Year Old Water Supply System, 1588-1988." Leaflet no. 1.
71 For a brief synopsis of Eyam's recent industrial history, see "A Miniature History of Eyam," leaflet no. 2 produced by the Eyam Village Sodety. For more extensive investigations, see Porteous 1950, Kirkham 1947, and Daniel 1977.
78 Eyam Edge lead vein was mined in its 18th century heyday, tithes going to the Eyam
rectory accounted for profound sums, and the village's Barmote Court had gained
considerable notoriety. Eventually, as explained earlier in this chapter, the mine's
productivity fell off and the village regained its previous political obscurity.
Today just under 1,000 people call Eyam home. In some ways things have not
changed for the local economy in hundreds of years: a large number of the villagers work
at industrial labors, employed in the huge Limestone quarry at the opposite side of the narrow valley that passes by Eyam; a few still farm or operate public houses; others make their livings in trades such as butchery, green grocery, and equipment repair. Even so, other aspects of the local economy have changed tremendously in the past few decades. Most notably, tourism has boomed and brings hundreds of thousands of people to the village every year. Although still available, the physical vocations such as mining and factory work that supported the villagers for generations are disappearing in favor of service positions catering to tourists. Several layers of planning codes now severely restrict the villagers' options for developing their own properties. Property values themselves are rising rapidly, pushing the poorer and even middle class young people out of Eyam. The village remains, but the community is changing dramatically.
Town End to Town Head
Church Street, Eyam's only thoroughfare, runs the length of the village. Cutting a one-mile-long, winding gouge in the ridge side, it takes a roughly east-west passage through town. To the north of the street, the slope rises quickly toward Eyam Edge which marks the southern rim of Eyam Moor high above. To the south, the landscape drops away sharply into dense woods toward the hidden valley floor far below. The eastern side of town is known locally as Town End, the western side as Town Head. A
79 walk from. Town End through the village to Town Head can provide a concise picture of
the village today and a useful key to the village's past.
Just before entering the village on the very narrow New Road from Grindleford to
the east, a smaller road diverges and leads back eastward, up into Riley Wood. This
track narrows immediately to one lane and steepens as it ascends the ridge. About one-
half mile up is Riley Farm and the Riley Graves, an important plague site that is
described in chapter four. Back down on New Road again, one descends a hill into
Town End and the Square. Here New Road becomes known as Church Street. The
"square" at Town End is really triangular, owing to an access road coming up through
the crags and forest between Eyam and Stoney Middleton one mile away. Also converging on the Square are Mill Lane (to the south) and Water Lane (to the north), both of which provide access to dwellings but narrow to footpaths or disappear altogether several hundred feet away from Church Street. Branching off from Mill Lane is a footpath to the Plague Boundary, or Boundary Stone.
The Square and Town End comprise a central location for activities that include festival events Kke band performances, weUs-dressing ceremonies, and children's may pole dancing. It also serves as a stop for some of the handful of daily public bus lines that crisscross the district between Sheffield and Manchester. Eyam's greatest concentration of eating, grocery, and quick-stop establishments is focused here on Town
End. Town End businesses include the Miner's Arms pub, Nancy's Stores grocer^,
George Siddall Butcher and Delicatessen, the Eyam Tea Rooms, the Peak Pantry sandwich shop, and the Fish and Chips take-away counter. To first-time visitors, the
Square looks like it could be the focal point of village activity. In some respects it is: anyone passing through Eyam must pass the Square, and so it sees its share of traffic.
72 In 1998 Nancy's Stores was liquidated. The space is now occupied by SPAR, a national grocery supermarket franchise, the first of its kind in Eyam.
80 For a person, interested in Eyam's plague history, however, the Square is less important
than areas further in toward the geographic and historical center of the village.
Continuing westward along Church Street from Town End, the road climbs a
short hill, flanked closely on the south side by limestone houses tightly situated against
one another and on the north side by a high stone wall. This wall retains a significant
load of the top earthworks of what used to be the Glebe Lead Mine right in the middle
of the village. When the conditions are just right, one can still feel waves of cold, damp
air pouring over the sidewalk below this wall; the draft comes from Glebe's deep shaft
which is still open to the air. A few more yards up this hill, also on the right, are the
Eyam Elementary School and the new clinic, where the village's two doctors practice. A
little further west up the hill is the Bull's Head pub across from which are the Rectory
and St. Lawrence Parish Church and the row of stone dwellings known as Plague
Cottages. The latter three constitute the symbolic center of Eyam as the "plague village," and until very recently the ecclesiastical structures were also the center of most
government activities as well. This area is the soul of the village as it is remembered in
its plague literature. Here one can find a variety of artifacts and displays relating to the plague period as well as the village's ancient past, and its landmarks wül be familiar already to a newcomer who was read about the Eyam plague.
Further west, past the Plague Cottages, are Eyam Hall and the Stockade. The
Stockade is a small green on which a small market took place centuries ago and where sentences for minor crimes were meted out publicly, hence the name stockade. Eyam
Hall, directly across from the green, is a [... I'U add a brief description here; it's especially relevant in a later chapter in which the current residents of the Hall are shown to play a role in village heritage affairs today].
Winding westward still, around several sharp turns in Church Street, one enters
Town Head. This is the western entrance to the main establishment of the village. The
81 Royal Oak pub provides a social anchor here in which the residences far outnumber the businesses. At Town Head, Hawk HiU Road climbs steeply northward away from
Church Street up to Eyam Moor. Near the base of Hawk Hül Road are the Eyam
Museum and a public car park. The museum opened its doors in 1995. On the far side
of the car park is the Mechanic's Institute's athletic fields, featuring tennis courts and a
soccer field, used by villagers for formal sporting events and informal recreation. Hawk
Hül Road winds upward past a row of half a dozen houses before entering a small woods below Eyam Edge. Following the road up and then eastward again, one comes upon Mompesson's Well. More than one tourist—myself included—has remarked in surprise to find not a well but little more than a tiny dribble of water almost totally concealed by a stone cover. The water flows from its protective cover to collect in a small stone basin and from there disappears again. Mompesson's Well is reputed to have been one of only two or three safe transfer points for goods during the plague. It represents the northern edge of the 1666 plague boundary and the furthest outpost of
the symbolic geography representing Eyeun's plague story. Although the area beyond
Mompesson's Well, espedaUy on Eyam Moor, figures into Eyam's oral and artifactual history, the plague story has been contained within the original cordon sanitaire almost as neatly as the plague itself is said to have been.
Eyam in the 17th Century
In many ways, Eyam in the mid-1660s was typical for a North-Midland village
in Restoration England. Most of the villagers were farmers and shepherds or laborers for
the area's lead mines and gritstone quarries, governed by the feudal and ecclesiastical structures of Charles II's and the Anghcan Church's joint rule. That is not to say that
Eyam was home for anyone representing any real influence, for politically it was only
one of thousands of similar localities that were hidden away in the English countryside
82 far away from the population centers. The Bradshaw family, living in the stately Tudor-
styled Bradshaw Hah (now destroyed), were the vihage's nearest incumbents to royal
privilege. Even so, they were quite far removed from any real power in the region and
had secured their position as Eyam's elite only through a fortuitous marriage almost a
century earlier. They apparently exercised little influence on the village's affairs and
were instead content to enjoy their relative wealth and luxury, flying their hawks on
Hawk Hih above the vUlage for their own amusement.
Eyam and the entire H ope Valley Lived in the shadow —or the glow —of
Chatsworth, the estate of the Earl of Devonshire. Only a few miles from Eyam, it is
visible from one of the hillside farms just below Eyam Edge. The Ecirl had little reason
to look in Eyam's direction on normal days and he was not in residence at Chatsworth
for a substantial portion of each year. Even so, his influence on law and economy in the
area made him very important to the region.
In 1644, the peirish entered a 20-year period during which it suffered difficulties with two very different-minded rectors. According to John Clifford (and verified by the
Parish register), Shoreland Adams, rector since 1630, was ejected from his Living^ by
the Puritans in 1644. New rector Thomas Stanley was installed immediately. Stanley,
for reasons that remain unclear, was removed from his Living in 1660 and Adams was reinstated. Stanley apparently served the parish in some capacity even after his ouster, working with Adams or perhaps keeping a conspicuous and close eye on him. The villagers almost certainly held divided loyalties for Stanley and Adams and the church
73 A Living is a parish minister's office in the Church of England. To receive a Living is an honor and measure of security analogous to tenure in academia.
83 politics^'^ they represented. It must have been an uncomfortable set of circumstances for just about everyone in the village. By 1664, the Archdiocese recognized the fact that
Eyam Parish required new leadership, and a young rector named William Mompesson
was appointed to the Living there. Just as he had done after Adams replaced him
several years earlier. Reverend Stanley remained in the village while Mompesson
attempted to work with his new and divided congregation. Oral tradition cind written
accounts—dating long after this period—claim that there was great animosity or suspicion between the two men. There is no direct evidence of such a strain in primary documents, so it's anybody's guess if and to what extent these speculations are accurate.
Reliable sources of information about Mompesson before his arrival in Eyam are scant, and it is perhaps enough for this study to mention that he was bom in 1638 and was the son of another minister. Reverend John Mompesson, Vicar of Seamer near
Scarborough (Beaumont 1-4). Mompesson was just a young man of 27 when he took on the Living at Eyam. Coming with him were his wife Catherine, son George, and daughter
Elizabeth. In 1669, three years after Eyam's plague ended, he took the Living at Eakring where his Benefactor lived and where his father had served as Vicar for a time. At
Eakring, he married his second wife (identified only as "Mrs. Charles Newby") and served the parish until his death in 1708 (Daniel 1977, 81-83). There is a small and amusing collection of folk narratives concerning Mompesson's work and presence in
Eakring, by all indications influenced by his immediate notoriety as the former rector of
74 Adams was an Anglican conservative and Stanley was a Puritan. Neither reportedly liked each other, and they took out their battle through the office the parish church which they divided and tussled over for sixteen years.
84 the "plague village."^ Mompesson is remembered as a hero for his actions during
Eyam's plague, and his memory is celebrated in many ways in Eyam today.
In 1665, one year after William Mompesson took over the Eyam congregation and struggled to work with former Vicar Stanley, the parish's political troubles abruptly became less important. On September 7, the first plague victim died. In the next fourteen months, 259 more Eyam people would perish of the same cause, testing the courage, will, determination, and faith of the clergy and all other people in Eyam. To borrow the words of historian William Bowsky, who wrote on the bubonic plague's effects in Europe, the plague in Eyam was "an epoch-making event" for the village.
75 These narratives are characterized by fears that Mompesson might bring plague to his new parish, even several years after the end of the last Imown outbreak. One story in particular claims that Mompesson was forced to live in a hut outside of Eakring's limits. Another alleges that he maintained a practice of holding services outside of the church under an ash tree known as "Pulpit Ash"—conspicuously similar to the outdoor services the minister conducted in Eyam during the plague (Daniel 1977, 81-83).
85 CHAPTER 4
EYAM'S PLAGUE NARRATIVE
The story of Eyam's plague thrives in oral, written, and material forms. Church
stall representatives and tour guides describe the events for tourists and school children.
Historians, medical researchers, and fiction novelists narrate Eyam's encounter with the
plague, focusing on this nucince of irony or that personal tragedy. Museum displays,
stained glass windows, and village well-dressings^^ choose iconographie moments for
representation in durable form. This chapter will describe the basic themes, motifs,
characters, and moral and social issues associated with the episodic narratives that,
together, constitute the story of Eyam, Plague Village. Because these tales have been told
and retold innumerable times by scholars, local historians, dramatists, and artists of
many kinds, it is impossible to account for all of the known variants under any pretense,
much less in a single chapter of a scholarly work. Besides, this is not intended to be a
comprehensive collection of Eyam-narrative oikotypes. Instead, the goal here is to present detail sufficient to allow one to understand the general features and limits of the
historical narratives that help people to remember—valorize, memorialize, or even
capitalize on—the horrors Eyam faced in the 17th century at the end of the last great
European plague pandemic.
76 Well-dressings are a traditional form of festival or commemorative display inherent to Derbyshire. Bam-door sized panels are decorated with flower petals, bark, and nuts ostensibly to celebrate—or bless—the safe and bountiful water supplies of the region.
8 6 The focus of this chapter will be on verbal forms of the Eyam plague story, mostly those available in print. This is a deliberate choice for three reasons: (1) representations of the Eyam narrative and its images as presented in other media are described in some depth in a later chapter; (2) published accounts are the common means through which most people become acquainted with the Eyam plague stor}'^; and
(3) most of the current oral tradition clearly reveals great similarities to a key group of primary written documents (and oral narrators today frequently go so far as to credit these same written accounts as the authoritative sources). In the strong and passionate community of Eyam enthusiasts, there is an agreeable and collective nod to the authority of the w ritten w ord.
Eyam Plague Literature
It is important to state a fact right now that will soon become obvious anyway:
We will never know aU of the details—medical, personal, political, or otherwise—about what happened in Eyam during the plague. Although this chapter is devoted to summarizing and characterizing the evidence that is available, there is no avoiding the fact that these matters concern a small village in England at a time more than 300 years ago when dire distractions gave comprehensive documentation an understandably low priority. Consequently, direct and revealing evidence from Eyam at the time of the plague is extremely scarce. Historical factors including literacy, economy, preservation, politics, technology, individuals' priorities, and three hundred intervening years have created a research environment in which even the extant materials are almost always suspect for one reason or another. Yet the evidence that is available corroborates the basic claims that an outbreak of plague devastated the village. This body of evidence
87 also allows us to make educated inferences about matters that go beyond the merest
basics, sort of a hazy mirror image that reflects parts of some historical edifices
indirectly.
In the study of folklore, the hazy mirror images people create for one reason or
another are often more important than the facts they purport to resemble. Without
wholly ignoring questions about the validity of certain narrative claims, this study is
most concerned with what has been preserved, regenerated, and even invented in the
living memory of Eyam's plague. New developments in research cannot harm a
folklorist's interest in such a subject easily. Say, for example, a researcher were to
determine conclusively tomorrow that the disease which hit Eyéun was not bubonic plague at all but rather something else entirely (which would effectively disconnect Eyam from the general plague tragedy that connected England and Europe as a miserable whole). Meirlys Lewis, proprietor of an Eyam bed and breakfast, noted in a personal letter early in 1998 that "There has been a controversial figure in Eyam recently. He is stirring things up with claims that the Eyam plague was really just anthrax."^ For some people, such a claim would be an unthinkable disruption because the long-celebrated narrative now depends on bubonic plague for many of its symbolic connections. It is normal and perfectly understandable to resist change in a fundamental part of a tradition to which one has become attached. For a folklorist, however, the appearance of a "controversial figure" or the introduction of a disruptive theory can turn out to be an interesting wrinkle in the overall texture of the subject. Considered in this context, we can examine the general layout of Eyam's plague narrative as it comes to us today
77 Meirlys Lewis, letter dated December , 1998.
8 8 without excessive feelings of regret that authoritative, original documents are scarce.
After aU, what is most interesting to folklorists is often what has been generated to fiU the empty spaces.
W hen the plague cam e to Eyam in 1665, only a sm all percentage of the villagers were literate. Most were poor farmers and laborers who couldn't read or write at all, resorting to leaving their "marks" on the few documents they may have been called upon to sign. Consequently, there is little first-person testimonial evidence of what happened to most of the people in Eyam when the plague devastated their families, Hvehhoods, and community. Most of the narrative, statistical, or epistolary material that was copied or survives today came from the few people in the village who had enjoyed the luxury of formal educations: the rector and his family, the parish clerk, the local gentry who occupied Bradshaw Hall, and a few other well-to-do families who owned property or had inherited fortunes. Only these elite few had the skills (and free time) to write about and document their experiences before, during, and after the plague.
Unfortunately, those who had the ability to educate themselves and their children also had the wherewithal to flee soon after the plague hit, leaving even fewer people to record and comment on the events. Like most of what occurred in England before nineteenth century industrialism paved the way for mass literacy, there are lamentably few documentary records concerning the lower classes and even fewer varied perspectives that could shed light on past events. As for the case of Eyam at the time of plague, a quick survey can account for and characterize the primary documents that have survived.
Tlie parish register, tax assessments, and last luills and testaments
Seventeenth century English feudal and ecclesiastical bureaucracies benefitted from an amazingly thorough and far-reaching record-keeping system. It dates back to
89 William the Conqueror's Domesday Book (AD 1085-86), a written census and account of
English landowners' property—including land, structures, and even sheep, cattle, and tools. This system had a great scope: it covered all of what was then England and has persisted through the centuries to the present day. The records kept were of interest to the highest and most powerful governing authorities in England^® who based their economic, political, and organizational structures on the information gathered. As
Philip Morgan points out, the "Domesday Book describes Old English society under new management, in minute statistical detail" (Introduction). The king, Morgan explains,
"wanted to know what he had, and who held it. .. . But to the King's grandson. Bishop
Henry of Winchester, its purpose was that every 'm an should know his right and not usurp another's'." The church had its investments in the king's survey and they managed to claim spiritual value in its detail. Not surprisingly, the assessments and associated levies and judgements were meted out through local jurisdictions such as towns, parishes, and counties. After the Domesday Book was created and its useful precedent had been established, the pattern survived, even if only fitfully at times and not as uniformly and thoroughly again until more modem times.
What we know today about the Eyam plague begins most impersonally with the parish register and hearth tax assessments, both of which are legacies of the Norman government. The parish register is a document in which the events concerning residents of Eyam Parish are recorded: their births^^ and baptisms, their marriages, and their deaths as well as certain other details such as each person of record's township of residence. John G. Clifford and Francine Clifford have accomplished the difficult and
78 Ultimately, the King and the Archbishop of Canterbury.
79 Birth dates are not recorded directly. Baptism dates are recorded, and since babies were usually baptized within two weeks of birth, one can infer the approximate birth dates with Üiat much accuracy.
90 tedious task of compiling the information from several Eyam Parish register documents into one comprehensive reference volume covering events from 1630 to 1700. Their Eyam
Parish Register 1630-1700 combines records from three distinct sources between which there are some discrepancies but not enough to cast the entire lot into doubt.
The primary soiuce for basic information about Eyam's parishioners during the plague has been referred to as the Main Register (Clifford and Clifford 1993, vi) which covers the years 1630-1768. At the time, it was housed in the parish chest at St.
Lawrence Parish Church in Eyam, maintained by the rector and the parish clerk. Today it is archived in the Derby Diocesan Record Office at Matlock near Derby, the county seat. As the Cliffords discovered, this volume "is not, until about 1705, a contemporaneous record and much of the contents is a copy, made between 1684 and
1705 under strange (not to say bizarre) circumstances," copied from yet another register that is now lost (1993 vi).
Although the story®° about how the Main Register was developed is a matter of great fascination to some historians who wish to challenge or defend the legitimacy of
Eyam's plague stories, it is too long to report here completely. In short, Joseph Hunt,
Rector of Eyam Parish Church from 1630 to 1705, took it upon himself to transcribe the parish registers prepared by his predecessors. This explains why aU of the entries over a
65 year period are in the same hand.
Unfortunately for people interested in original artifacts from the time of the plague, this means that there are no official accounts of plague deaths as recorded by
80 Clifford and Clifford have provided, by far, the most scrupulous account of the Hunt story, originally transcribed from oral tradition by Clarence Daniel (attributed but not cited). The story describes a transgression by the vicar which resulted in his having to marry the daughter of a local pub's proprietor. Unable to pay a debt generated through "protracted litigation," the vicar and his wife were forced to remain in the confines of the church itself as a sanctuary against the bailiffs for more than twenty years. The story also claims that Hunt and his wife raised nine children while under confinement in the church. (See Clifford and Clifford, 1993).
91 William. Mompesson, Eyam's rector at the time of the plague. The other two documents that contain parish records are the Bishop's Transcripts (hand-made copies of the original registers) and a supplementary register maintained by Hunt's clerk. Neither of these two documents covers the period around or during 1665-1666 when the plague hit
Eyam.®^ It is notew orthy to m ention that (aside from a sm all num b er of m inor mistakes of a clerical nahue—transpositions, spelling, etc.) the Bishop's Transcripts and the supplementary register corroborate the information recorded in the Main Register where there is overlap. It is reasonably safe to assume that Hunt's transcribed portions of the
Main Register are equally accurate and faithful.
Curious circumstances aside, the Parish Register provides a foundation of circumstantial evidence confinning that the plague hit Eyam and what the extent of its toll was. The Register indicates that between September 7,1665 and November 1, 1666,
260 people died of plague in Eyam parish.®^ This number has been disputed because of apparent discrepancies between the registers and narrative accounts as well as some critics' general assertions that the numbers of plague deaths in England and Europe have been exaggerated either by error or by design. In spite of critics' assertions, the number of plague deaths in Eyam recorded in the Main Register seems defensibly accurate.
(Were this study a statistical analysis of some sort, perhaps it would be useful to dispute a probable margin of error; but the actual numbers aren't so important here and now.) What is worth mentioning is that during the same fourteen-month period, the
Main Register actually reflects 276 deaths in the parish, sixteen of which were
81 Duplicating copies of registers for archiving at the Diocesan office was policy, but during the plague the practice appears to have been suspended.
82 1x1 the Main Register, Hunt has numbered the deaths attributed to the plague, declining to number the deaths from other causes.
92 apparently due to causes other than the plague (Clifford 1993, 87-98)—a detail that
should lend the Hunt record some credibility.
Besides a body count, so to speak, the Eyam Parish Register begins to piece
together the rudimentary details of what wiU become the plague narrative. Across
several columns in the register after an entry dated September 5,1665, Reverend Hunt
wrote, "Here foUoweth ye Names, with ye number, of ye Persons who Died of the
Plague."®^ The next entry, dated September 7, represents one of the only appearances of
the name George Vicars in all of the village's records—it records his burial. Vicars
appears to have been the plague's first victim in Eyam. According to the oral and
documentary evidence. Vicars was a solitary person with no known family and was a
newcomer in the village. Because he had no family and may not have had any Mends
there yet, his death may have gone unremarked until two weeks later another three
people in the cottages next to his died of alarming physical symptoms just as he had.
The gritstone cottages are all lined up in a row on Church Street immediately
west of the churchyard, sharing walls at either end. They soon became known as the
Plague Cottages, a label that describes them still today. By the end of December that
same year, 46 people in the village had died from similar afflictions. The villagers, not
deprived of news from other parts of England, soon knew without doubt that they had
an outbreak of the plague on their hands. As the record has already shown, by
November the following year, 260 plague deaths had been noted in the Parish Register.
The Register also shows that Ufe went on: there were at least 22 baptisms yet only three
83 Eyam Parish Church. 1991. "Facsimile of Original Plague Register 1665-66.'
93 marriages during that same period.^ Life went on, but optimism must have failed early
on during the outbreak.
Almost all of the older versions of the history of Eyam's plague, and some of the
new versions too, proclaim the village's population at the beginning of the outbreak to
have been right around 350. Based on the Register's record of 260 plague deaths, it had
been deduced for many decades that this left a population of only 80 survivors—a
supposed mortality rate of more than 77%. Were this accurate, it could have possibly
represented the most devastating loss for any single community of similar size or greater
in aU of Europe. Fortunately, this figure appears to have been an error. William Wood,
a self-taught village historian, appears to have been the first to present the population
estimate of 350 in his The Histories and Antiquities of Eyam in 1848. He apparently based
this estimate on a fine in a letter written by Wüliam Mompesson, Eyam's rector during
the plague. Writing to John Beilby, an attorney in Yorkshire, Mompesson announces the end of the plague and describes the activities he and the villagers had imdertaken®^ to cleanse their dwellings and belongings. In this letter, he seems almost giddy, jumping wildly from Latinized proclamations of his vitality to mournful farewells to his dead wife and parishioners. Through this fervor he writes:
The Condition of this Place hath been so sad that I presuade [sic] myself it did exceed all History and Example; I may truly say our Town is become a GOLGOTHA, the Place of a skull, and had there not been a small remnant of us left, we had been as Sodom and Uke unto Gomorrah. My ears never heard such doleful lamentations, my nose never felt such horrid smells, and my eyes never
84 Some historians suggest the very believable possibility that toward the end of the plague epidemic, the rector may have given his register short-shrift and failed to note some marriages or births since neither was presided over by the Church's officer during the plague anyway.
85 This includes fumigating and burying—or burning—aU woolen articles as had been decreed by the Lord Mayor of London in the previous year.
94 beheld such gastly Spectacles. Here hath been 76 Families visited within my Parish, out of which have died 259.86 (November 20,1666)
Noting that Mompesson had accounted for 76 families. Wood estimated an average of
approximately five people per household, arriving at the population of 350. As John
Clifford, Clarence Daniel, G. R. Batho, and others have convincingly argued. Wood had
to be mistaken. First of all, observing that 76 families had been "visited" by plague isn't
the same as certifying that there were that number of families in the entire village. On
the contrary, based on the simple assumption that plague almost certainly did not hit
every household, there had to have been more villagers than that. Before the end of the
19th century, historians had begun to challenge Wood's figure.
Derbyshire County historian J. C. Cox examined the results of a 1676
ecclesiastical inquiry (known as the Compton Return) into the number of conformists,
nonconformists, and papists (292). The return showed an adult population of 542 and,
by a formula arrived at by Cox, adds 40% for children who were not counted. The
result was an estimate of 750 for Eyam's population ten years after the plague's end, an
early challenge to Wood's estimate. Although it is possible that the village might have
experienced a higher increase in population than normal immediately following the plague, a difference by a factor of 100% is extremely unlikely. Even if one questions
Cox's formula, the evidence that Wood was incorrect to some degree remains persuasive. Fortunately, something as simple as a tax document can shed more light on
this particular challenge to W ood's figure.
The 1664 Eyam Hearth Tax performed the function of assessing taxes on the wealthier households in the village. Hearth Taxes were administered on the county level, in Eyam's case through Derby. Most dwellings—from nearly the poorest cottages to the
86 Although Mompesson accounts for 259 plague deaths in this letter, I assume that the Eyam Parish Register is the more accurate account.
95 finest halls—had a hearth for cooking and heating. The wealthier householders could
afford the luxury of additional hearths for heat and convenience and often had several
in any single dwelling (allowing for separate kitchens and living areas). Taxes could be
levied proportionally based on the property owner's number of extra hearths. If a
household had two or more hearths, they were assessed and taxed and then recorded in
the Hearth Tax return; if a household had one or none, it was noted and there was no
tax assessed.
Clifford, who has performed exhaustive first-hand research on this subject in
county archives, reports that the 1664 Eyam Hearth Tax shows 59 households were
taxed and 101 poorer ones were not (Bradley; Daniel 1977; Clifford 1993, 23; personal
interview CA081697.01). This new estimate (based on the average of five people per
household) produces a figure of between 700 and 800 as Eyam's population in 1664.
Leslie Bradley has conducted a laborious statistical analysis of the demographic data in
Eyam before, during, and after the plague. Relying chiefly on relative baptism rates, she
concludes that in early 1665 the village may have had a population of almost 1,100 (67).
Considering the total range of estimates produced by Bradley, Clifford, and others,
Eyam's plague mortality rate would have been somewhere between a much more
reasonable 24-37% (which was still higher than average for England and Europe by some
estimates).
The mistaken but ghastly notion of 77% mortality in a village of 350 has proven just too compelling to resist, even for some very recent researchers. Even though the
information provided by the hearth tax assessments and the 1676 Compton Return offer
a strong argument for enlarging the presumed population of the village, some modem
writers remain seduced by the more compelling lower figure. For example, in The Black
Death: A Biological Reappraisal (1984)—by m ost other standards a credible scientific
review of the plague in Europe—Graham Twigg bases a significant analogy for measuring
96 peak European mortality rates for bubonic plague on the already overturned assumption
that only about 50 people in Eyam survived the same outbreak.
A third category of primary documents from Eyam's 1665-66 period is personal
wills and testaments. It is difficult for many of us 20th century dwellers—used to
looking for the next amazing development just around the comer—to imagine that
people who lived and died hundreds of years ago in remote English villages had the
benefit (or burden) of legal structures similar to ours, designed to protect their own and
their estates' interests. Yet the practice of documenting one's last wül was put to
vigorous good use during Eyam's most tumultuous fourteen months. Just as some people
in the village had the training and time to write about their plague experiences in narrative or epistolary forms, some were also capable of writing their own wills. Others
dictated them to the Vicar, to the church clerk, or to anyone else capable of setting their intentions into print in as much a hurry as circumstances required. Original copies of victims' last wiUs and testaments are avaUable in various repositories, including St.
Lawrence Parish Church, Chatsworth Estate, and the Eyam Museum.
One good example ülustrates the nature of a well-to-do person's last will and
testament. Living next door to the first Eyam victim, Wüliam Thorpe's famüy was among the first to suffer losses due to the plague. Thorpe's son Thomas and four other members of his immediate famüy, including his wife Mary, had already been counted among the village's first ten plague victims, all dying between September 26 and October
3,1665.®^ He acted quickly to protect his remaining heirs during the emergency. It appears that Wüliam wrote his own will in remarkably practiced fashion on October 3,
87 Eyam Parish Register, Clifford and Clifford.
97 1665 on. the same day as his wife's death. Excerpts from the first and last portions of
his will®® show how thorough he was in spite of the difficult circumstances:
In the name of God Amen. I William Thorpe of Eyam in the County of Darby yoeman beinge in good health and perfect memory blessed be god, but seeing by dayle experience die uncertainty of this transitory Ufe by the hand of god upon my family Do make constitute ordaine and declare this my last will and Testament in manner and forme following. Revokinge and annulinge (by these presents) all and every Testament and Testaments, will and wills heretofore by me made and declared, eyther by word or wrifinge, and this to be taken onely for my last will and Testament and none other....
Lastly I give and bequeath unto Robert Thorpe and WiUiam Thorpe aforesayd, eyther of them twenty shillings to be payd in one whole yeare after my decease. And I doe nominate and appoint John Wilson of Church-Style and the sayd Abraham Broadhurst Guardians to the sayd Alice Thorpe and Thomas Thorpe; and Executir of this my last wül and Testament desiring them to take this charge upon them not doubting but they will execute it according to the true intent and meanings thereof. In witness whereof I have hereunto putt my hand and seale The third day of October 1665.
In the presence of us WiUiam Thorpe John Hancock John Chapman his marke Anthony Raworth
He died four days later. By October, 1666, a total of ten members of Thorpe's famüy
had faUen to the plague. Most of them were his beneficiaries.
Even those who could not write their own wills and had very Uttle property to bequeath saw to it that their wishes were documented as properly as possible. The task
of taking their dictation sometimes came as business for attorneys from nearby cities,®^
and it sometimes feU to Mompesson himself to do the writing. In stül other cases
8® Reproduced in Daniel 1977 (54-55). Apparently, Uttle is known about Thorpe's vocation and training, but looks probable that he was reasonably wealthy and could have had enough education to write his own wül in this manner, especiaUy if he had good counsel and a sample to work from.
89 Clarence Daniel has collected information from many wills, including one for Rowland Mower that was recorded by attorney Joseph Stanley from Sheffield, brother of Eyam's former Vicar. (1977 61-63; Eyam Museum).
98 recalled in oral tradition, dying villagers took pains to make their intentions known from their death-beds, doing whatever they could to ensure that their families and Livestock would be cared for. These and other surviving examples of written wills constitute yet another interesting and sad body of evidence that hides the devil in the details, so to speak. Researchers such as Daniel, Batho, and especially the Cliffords have done very useful and meticulous work to distill exactly what the wills may reveal. For example, when analyzed in conjunction with the parish registers and tax assessments, the wills provide invaluable details about who in Eyam was related to whom and how. The extension of this pursuit contributed to these researchers' persuasive conclusions about the actual population of Eyam at the time of the plague (Clifford and Clifford). The wills have been helpful in determining the vocations of many of the village's residents and victims, and this has permitted modem researchers to begin to create a more accurate and detailed account of what Hfe may have been like in Eyam during the plague.
The letters of William Mompesson
Several original letters written by Rector Mompesson around the time of Eyam's plague are preserved in the Chatsworth Estate's archive, the Eyam Museum, and Eyam
Parish Church. Others may be distributed among private collections elsewhere, but one can only guess at what they hold. The most famous and compelling of all of
Mompesson's surviving letters concern his communications with people near the end of or immediately following the plague. They have remained of great interest because they are by far the most intimate and saddest first-hand accounts of the Eyam plague; in fact, besides the last wills and testaments, there are no other known surviving first- person accounts in written form. Unlike the parish register, hearth tax assessments, and even the relatively savvy last wills and testaments, Mompesson's letters provide direct
99 descriptions of the emotional, physical, and psychological extents to which the plague was a disaster for him personally and for the community he led. (Transcriptions of these famous letters are presented later in this chapter.)
The earliest scholarly/ and popular appraisals of Eyam's plague period
In his History of Epidemics in Britain, Charles Creighton calls Eyam's plague story
"the most famous of all English plagues" (682). Writing more than one hundred years ago, he was already able to observe that "the story of it has been told many times in prose and verse, its traditional incidents being well suited to minor poets and moral writers, and the whole action of the drama conveniently centered within a circuit of half a mile in a cup of the healthy lulls" (682-87). Although there has been a real boom in the production of Eyam plague literature during the past several decades, it is not surprising that Creighton could refer to the story's "traditional incidents," for they had already begun the process of becoming established and entrenched by the middle of the eighteenth century through the efforts of some early chroniclers and researchers.
In aU of the literature on Eyam and the plague, there is one document which repeatedly receives the nod for being the subject's first treatment in scholarship: Richard
M ead's A Short Discourse Concerning Pestilential Contagion, and the Methods to be Used to
Prevent It (1720). M ead (1673-1754), an English physician, w as b o m just after the plague's disappearance from England, and he was absolutely fascinated with it. His purpose in writing A Short Discourse was to gather oral and written information about the plague and to author a guide for understanding and dealing with it. Mead's account of Eyam's plague is brief and figures only tangentiaUy in his book, but it remained the most significant written account of Eyam's plague for another seventy years. Here it is, reproduced m its entirety:
1 0 0 The Plague was likewise at Eham in the Peak of Derbyshire, being brought thither by means of a Box sent from London to a Taylor in that Village, containing some Materials relating to his Trade. There being several incidents in this latter instance that will not only serve to establish in particular the Precepts I have been giving, in relation to Goods, but likewise all the rest of the Directions, that have been set down, for stopping the Progress of the Plague from one Town to another: I shall finish this Chapter with a particular Relation of what passed in that Place. A Servant, who first opened the foresaid Box, complaining that the Goods were damp, was ordered to dry them at the Fire; but in doing it was seized with the Plague and died: the same misfortune extends to all the rest of the Family, except the Taylor's wife who alone survived. From hence the Distemper spread about and destroyed in that Village, and the rest of the Parish, though a small one, between two and three hundred Persons. But notwithstanding this so great Violence of the Disease, it was restrained firom reaching beyond that Parish by the Care of the Rector; from whose Son, and another worthy Gentleman, I have the Relation. This Clergyman advised, that the Sick should be removed into Hutts or Barracks^o built upon the Common; and procuring by the Interest of the then Earl of Devonshire, that the People should be well furnished with Provisions, he took effectual Care, that no one should go out of the Parish: and by this means he protected his Neighbours from Infection with compleat Success. (149-151)
Mead's account was transcribed firom the testimonies (presumably oral) of
Mompesson's son and "another worthy Gentleman." Although we know nothing of who this mysterious gentleman was, we do know something about the son. George
Mompesson and his sister Elizabeth were sent away from Eyam sometime after the beginning of the plague. Both survived and were reunited with their father afterward.
George was four years old when the plague struck, and that w^ould have made him a man in his late fifties by the time Mead published his Short Discourse. There is some disagreement among Eyam's many researchers concerning the merits of Mead's and the junior Mompesson's accoimt. After aU, it was penned second-hand from an older man's memory of events that took place during his childhood. I have to agree with some critics
(Batho in particular) and assume that the jimior Mompesson did not provide accounts solely based on his memory of events as a very small child; rather, he almost certainly relied on what he had heard his father and other survivors said about Eyam's plague as
90 Lazarettos and pest-houses.
1 0 1 he grew up. Thus Mead's account probably contained the core elements of what had
already begun to develop as the traditional narrative, originating from the survivors
themselves. Elizabeth Bradley (80) found an obscure reference to Eyam's plague in
another book published in the first half of the eighteenth century, and it too exhibits the
most recognizable motif of the plague story:
In December 1664, some Families near Westminster were seized [szc] w ith the Plague, which was lately imported from Holland in some Bales of Cotton. However the violence of the severe and long Frost put a Stop to it, till April that it began again; was in fluctuating State all May and Jime; after that rose to its H e i^ t before the Middle of September; then declined and was out by next Winter. The Fault not being in the Air, it spread no further than it was communicated. As to Eyam in Derbyshire, whither it was transmitted in a Letter from London with some Patterns of Cloth and Fashions to a Taylor, here it quickly killed between 2 and 300, or near half the People of the Village. (Short, 339-340)
Relatively recent Eyam scholarship (Batho, Bradley) refers to brief poetic and
narrative accounts "based in the main on oral tradition" (Bradley 64) that appeared
around 1790. Eyam residents William Howitt and Mary Howitt published several of
Mompesson's letters and a collection of original poetry, respectively. Unfortunately,
copies of these works are very difficult to secure for examination and I was unable to
use them for this study. Other hard-to-find early accounts include Ebenezer Rhodes's
Peak Scenery, an 1818 popular guidebook, and Samuel Roberts's "elevating" 1834 guide book entitled Eyam: Its Trials and Triumph (Batho 82-84). Also appearing in various bibliographies are other collections of poetry and episodic treatments in longer works of
fiction, authored beginning in the 1850s and continuing up to the year Batho published his reappraisal of Eyam's plague. Together all of these works constitute, in Batho's opinion, "a plethora of fiction, drama, poetry and antiquarian writing, much of it of an indifferent quality by any criterion and all of it little read these days" (82).
1 0 2 In. 1842,however, an Eyam man named W illia m Wood published a book about
Eyam's plague that would become the most influential work ever written on the subject
One can hardly read anything about Eyam without coming across Wood's name and
references to his Histories and Antiquities of Eyam or one of its seven revisions. It is
extremely difficult to write about Eyam for long without referring to Wood or, for that
matter, to think of Eyam without relying on an image or detail first reported by him.
Wood's narrative is the narrative accepted most widely as the Eyam plague story.
William Wood and The History and Antiquities of Eyam
In Eyam and Derbyshire, William Wood is still regarded as a member of the family. He was a local man, bom and raised in Eyam. He lived his whole life there, contributing to the community in a very lasting way; by writing the document that would define the village for at least the next century and one-half—and then some. In
the words of biographer G. R. Batho, Wood "expressed the enigma which has fired the imaginations of men in successive generations for now three centuries" (81). Copies of the eight editions of The History and Antiquities of Eyam are very difficult to come by today, yet I have a photocopy made from one of the originals. It appears that fewer than 500 copies of any single edition were ever printed, and most of those may have been sold, used, and lost in the Derbyshire area before they could ever make their way to libraries across England or overseas.
Wood prepared the various editions of his book at least in part for tourists.
Describing the stunning view firom Prince William Peak above Eyam Moor, Wood reflects: "How rapturous must be the feelings of the tourist who ascends the peak of this mountain, and beholds on every hand the unaffected handmarks of Nature!" (12).
His language and occasional nods to the interests of tourists offer plain indication that tourism was a contributing factor in the preparation of this work. Even if it was not a
103 major factor, the emergent tourism industry in Eyam welcomed the availability of
W ood's lavish account. In the first line of the preface to the second edition. Wood
proclaims that "The public, for some time past, has incessantly demanded a second
edition of this work" (v). Considering the nature of supply and demand for plague
literature in Eyam today, it is a very safe bet that a substantial part of Wood's "public"
consisted of tourists who sought a detailed written account of the famous plague. One
might even go so far as to suggest that Wood believed that he was contributing to (a) the
general historical record and preservation of popular antiquities^^ and (b) the education
of future generations of ambassadors for the village. In a rare moment of reflection.
Wood calls attention to a desired function of his books:
One hundred and eighty-two years have now transpired since this unequalled and dreadful visitation; and, tiierefore, many of the stones which told of the calamities of Eyam, have been destroyed. In order that the future inhabitants of Eyam may be enabled to point out to the tourist most of the places where the ashes of the sufferers repose, I shall briefly describe the places where stones have been known to exist; where bones and bodies have been found. .. . (108, emphasis added)
None of this is to say that Wood wrote his book expressly for tourists; they were simply one population among several avid consumer groups. One can also never really shake the obvious impression that Wood wrote The History and Antiquities of Eyam as a personal expression of his literary self-training and knowledge, his fascination with popular antiquities and traditions, and his intimate identification with the village and its sense of itself. Wood appears to advocate the interests of a tourist from time to time in order to take a new perspective on his old village for the sake of revealing or relishing firesh insights. Describing the Hancock graves on the Riley—the material center of one of
91 In Wood's terminology, "antiquities" refers to a narrow range of relics from Eyam's past, mostly confined to material and linguistic "survivals." Wood also often refers to local "traditions," generally meaning oral folk narratives.
104 the saddest episodes from Eyam's plague—Wood steps outside of himself and seems to explore the Riley Graves again in an intimate, personal way. He does so, however, in the guise of a tourist, exploring the meanings the Riley Graves hold for him:
It is impossible for the tourist to describe his feelings fully and minutely when he visits this hallowed and lonely place; he beholds, in the language of Ossian, "green tombs with their rank whistling grass; with their stones and mossy heads;" and his soul becomes suddenly overcharged with grave and solemn emotions. The scenery around these rude and simple monuments of eventful mortality, is highly picturesque; and adds greatly to the impressiveness of the sensations which a visit to this place invariably creates. (107)
Although the impact and distribution of Wood's books are not terrific in the scheme of world Literature, his History is absolutely central to the way Eyam's past is remembered. This one volume, with its many copious revisions, functions as a retroactive index for the characters, landmarks, social structures, personal relationships, specific events or occurrences, and moral overtones that pop up in later treatments of
Eyam's plague. Batho offers an accurate estimation of W ood's influence on the Eyam plague narrative: "With all its imperfections, [the] account remains today the major source for the narrative of the Plague of Eyam" (81). Clarence Daniel, another Eyam historian who published in the middle of this century, adds that "much of the material w ritten about Eyam Plague owes its origin to this self-taught chronicler" (1965 34).
Wood's account is, in essence, the proprietary ur-form of the Eyam plague narrative. So say his biographers and critics, and so suggests the subsequent body of Eyam plague literature.
Before his book made him a local celebrity. Wood was a typical Eyam man.
Bom in the village in 1804, he was the son of a lead miner and inherited his family's small cottage just off Town End at the Lydgate. He was active in village organizations.
He played an instrument in the village choir, served as librarian of the village's
Mechanic's Institute, and taught Sunday School at the church. His estimable local
105 reputation bears the hallmarks of another revered 19th century figure in the United
States who is said to have picked himself up by his bootstraps and taught himself to
read: "It was in Sunday School that the future historian learned to read, and he was
instructed in writing by his father. He often walked several miles to obtain the loan of books with which to further improve his education," wrote Clarence Daniel (1965 34-
35). In the preface to his book's second edition. Wood points out that he is neither a
trained author nor historian but that he was rninimally qualified for the task simply because he was a local man.
As though to preempt later critiques that he embellished the story. Wood positions himself as a brother skeptic at heart and offers an explanation for how his narrative is so much more detailed than the previous written materials can account for:
Highly commendable as are the brief descriptions of these illustrious authors [Mead, Seward, the Howitts, and others], on this painfully interesting subject, they are, however, respectively deficient in ample detcdl,—in correct data,—in the enumeration of material circumstances,—and in being compiled from cursory, casual, and erroneous information: defects, which could have been avoided only by a long residence in the locality. To rectify the mistakes of preceding writers,—to introduce many hitherto omitted circumstances,—to snatch almost from oblivion a great number of incidents,—to collect into one body all the available information coimected with that dire visitation, has been my humble attempt; and to whatever degree I may have succeeded, it must not be ascribed to paramount intellectual ability; but solely to having all my Hfe resided among the impressive memorials of that awful scourge. Thus circumstanced I have also had the advantage of hearing, a thousand times repeated, the many traditions on that doleful subject.
It is to be regretted that a minute account of the occurrence was not taken nearer the time: and I cannot but sincerely wish that the task had fallen into more able hands even now . (1848 vi-vii)
Wood's account is about 180 pages long and was written eight or so generations after
the end of the plague. Influential accounts that predated Wood's, some of which were transcribed from firsthand oral testimony,^- were no more than a few lines long in their
92 Richard Mead and William Howitt.
106 entireties. Written record was thin. Wood noticed what others following him had to
see: there is a great disparity between the spare accounts written in the decades after
Eyam's plague and the publication of Wood's account which is detailed, highly
organized, and framed with numerous editorial comments although written much later.
He maneuvers to cover his backside by pointing out that, as an Eyam man, he had
always "resided among the impressive memorials of that awful scourge" and heard "the many traditions on that doleful subject" a thousand times. Methodologically speaking,
this goes toward accounting for the mysterious appearance of details that, by all accounts, had not existed in writing through almost two centuries.
It is fascinating to reflect on the fact that W ood's first and second editions of his
History (1842 and 1848) were completed during the early years of what was to become our modem field of folklore studies.^^ In the preface to his 1848 edition. Wood refers to corrections he has made for "errors relating to history, antiquities, and science"
(emphasis added). Considering his numerous references to classical and contemporary
Uteratiures, Wood was obviously a careful and avid reader who considered himself a participant in the pursuit and documentation of England's popular antiquities. It is almost certain that he was aware of Literary scholars' salvage activities (early folklore work) and their publications in the nascent field of folklore studies and its cognates.
What Wood really did, without knowing it, was to make his History and Antiquities of
Eyam the first large-scale oral history of Eyam's plague. Wood documented new narrative details he collected from villagers (as well as from unspecified additional sources). Although it was done without any of the reflexivity of many present-day folklorists. Wood succeeded in recording two very important things: one, that stories
93 It was in 1846 that William John Thoms wrote his celebrated letter to an English journal. The Athenaeum, proposing that scholars interested in popular antiquities and survivals refer to the matter of their subject as "folk-lore." (Thoms submitted his proposal under the pseudonym Ambrose Merton.)
107 about Eyam's plague were still current in oral tradition and had relevance for villagers,
and two, that he served as the principal ethnographer who added texture to the bare
details about the events.
Adding texture to the details is something Wood did with abandon and for
which he receives some hard knocks by his critics. A good read of the History and
Antiquities of Eyam quickly shows that Wood was very proud of the village and its story
and had a deep and abiding interest in elevating both to levels at which they enjoyed
unusual significance on moral and social grounds. Examples of this are plentiful. The
dedication of the second edition consists of a letter Wood has written to the long-dead
son of William Mompesson^^:
TO
GEORGE MOMPESSON HEATHCOTE,
OF NEWBOLD, ESQ.
Sir, In dedicating these labours of my leisure hours to you, my desire is to perpetuate, to the utmost of my humble ability, the lofty virtues of your noble-souled ancestor, Mompesson, Rector of Eyam, during its pestilential desolation. As a descendant of so exemplary a character you must unavoidably feel intense satisfaction; that you participate in the undying homage which hallows his memory is a consequence, evident, essential, and natural; and that this unassuming little volume may contribute, in some degree, to that object is the fervent wish of
Your humble servant,
WILLIAM WOOD
Eyam, July 1,1848
94 George Mompesson is the same son who provided the brief account first published by R ichard M ead in 1720.
108 Not far into his introduction to the village. Wood writes about the significance of Eyam's geographical surroundings, which include the hills of the Pennines:
A little farther north, nearly in the centre of the parish, rises Sir William,—the Parnassus of the Peak; a mountain of great altitude, and honoured by numberless classical associations. From the summit of this Prince of Derbyshire hills, the ey extends over countless hills and luxuriant dales. Masson, Axe-edge, Mam Tor, Kinderscout, and Stémage lift up their hocuy heads and teU, in lémguage stronger than words, of a companionship of ages. How rapturous must be the feelings of the tourist who ascends the peak of this mountain, and beholds on every hand the imaffected handmarks of Nature! How joyous his sensations to perceive in such goodly profusion, the original traces of the finger of God! Beautiful mountain! ever shall I remember standing on thy summit at the decline of a hot summer's day; the sinking sun tinged with gold the peeiks of far distant lulls, which shone severally in the distance like well remembered joys in the memory of the past. But anon, this lovely scene was changed: I beheld the clouds, old couriers of the sky, marshalling the elements to war; the distant mountains put on their misty robes, as if conscious of the impending storm. Soon I saw the vivid lightning flash; the thunder bellowed in the rear; and in the midst of this sublime scene I almost unconsciously repeated the following exquisite lines of Byron, changing almost without premeditation the words "Jura" and "joyous Alps," to "Mam Tor," and "Sir William high" (12-13)
And still elsewhere Wood provides instruction that is characteristic of the endless editorial comments he supplies in order to convince the reader of the narrative's nearly mystical and sublime connections:
Let all who tread the green fields of Eyam, remember, w ith feelings of awe and veneration, that beneath their feet repose the ashes of those moral heroes, who, with a sublime, heroic, émd an unparalleled resolution, gave up their lives,—yea! doomed themselves to pestilential death, to save the surrounding country. The immortal victors of Thermopylae's and Marathon, who fought so bravely in liberty's holy cause, have no greater, no stronger claim to the admiration of succeeding generations, than the humble villagers of Eyam in the year 1666. Their magnanimous self-sacrifice.. .. (35)
95 Herodotus tells of a great battle, with the Greek army laying in wait for the Persian army in a narrow pass at Thermopylae. Although it was an idecd defensive position for the Greeks, they were eventually betrayed and the Persian army moved into position to overwhelm the forces. Three hundred of the Greeks stayed back to buy time for the rest of the huge force to retreat. All 300 perished, but they saved the rest of their army (see Rich; Bradford)
109 Wood's knack for selecting applicable metaphors and literary allusions is quite good.
Thermopylae, for instance, refers to an ancient battle in which 300 trapped Greek soldiers voluntarily sacrificed themselves to hold off the Persian army long enough so that the rest of the Greek army could escape a battlefield on which they faced hopeless odds. The symbolic—and even numerical—connection between this event and the Eyam sacrifice or "battle" is obvious, and the effect is pleasing. As G. R. Batho observes.
Wood's narrative "had romantic and moral overtones which appealed deeply to the
Victorians" (81). This helps to explain why the book went through eight editions by the end of the century. A press notice—one of several—included in the front matter of the second edition reflects the appetite that sustained the book through eight editions:
There is a degree of beautiful simplicity and tenderness about this work which renders it most interesting to readers. The writer is one who has evidently conversed with nature and his own spirit amid those romantic and historically- interesting scenes of his nativity which he here so lovingly describes. It is embued with poetry, and excites a degree of sympathy in the reader.... {King's Macclesfield Paper)^^
Eyam's edification as an English Thermopylae lends the struggle a timeless, epic quality. By today's standards, however. Wood's style is too allegorical and romantic to be taken without a substantial grain of salt. This is not a trait unique to him by any stretch, either in the body of Eyam plague Hterature or in much of the local-historical writing of the same period in other parts of England. Even today, many people writing about Eyam's plague exhibit a similar romanticism and tendency toward the superlative in their styles, undoubtedly influenced some by Wood's original presentation.
In Eyam, all roads lead to Wood. The History and Antiqidties of Eyam has meant a great deal to many people's perceptions of the village, for visitors and locals alike.
Because his book emerged from a veritable vacuum of accessible information. Wood
96 Wood 1848, ix.
1 1 0 supplied nearly all of the specific, interpretive, anecdotal, and moral raw materials on which today's analyses and fictions (including this study) are based. Reviewing a substantial collection of various versions of Eyam's story, it would be easy to compile a motif index and character list that highlight connections between the works and which ultimately point back to The History and Antiqidties of Eyam. To provide an adequate frame of reference for later discussions about various features of the story, I will present a detailed synopsis of the major events and characters in Wood's oral history of Eyam's plague. It will consist of passages quoted directly from the 1848 (second) edition, accompanied by a minimum of interpretation or commentary. This will (a) exhibit the scope and nature of the Eyam plague story as a composite whole as it is generally known today and (b) provide a basis for recognizing connections and implications when various features of the composite are rendered and analyzed in different contexts.
The History and Antiquities of Eyam
W illia m W ood
CONTENTS
Characteristics of Eyam, Geological Features, Toadstone, Scenery, Antiquities, Manor, Plague, Its nature and origin. Its communication to Eyam, Death of the first Victim, Mompesson's Children sent away. The Cordon Sanitaire, Cucklet Church, Affecting Death of Mrs. Mompesson, Mompesson's Letter to his Children,
1 1 1 ■ Sir George Saville, -J. Beilby, Traditions of the Plague, Riley Graves, Name and Date of the Death of each Victim, The Church, The Church-yard, The Rectors, The Mines, Minstrels, Families of Distinction, Eccentric Characters, Introduction of Methodism, Benefactors of Eyam, Mansions and Occupants, The Dale, &c.
Figure 2. The table of contents in The History and Antiquities o f Eyam, second edition.
The first few sections of Wood's book present information of general interest concerning
Eyam and the area. They provide descriptions of the village's layout, the geology and
archaeology of the region, the linguistic origins and implications of the name Eyam, and various romantic speculations about the nature and significance of Eyam's past.
Wood's momentum builds toward his account of the plague, the heart of his history, which begins as follows:
[The villagers'] magnanimous self-sacrifice, in confining themselves within a prescribed boundary during the terrible pestilence, is unequalled in the annals of the world. The plague, which would undoubtedly have spread from place to place through the neighboring counties, and which eventually carried off five- sixths of their number, was, in the following forcible language of a celebrated writer, "here hemmed in , and, in a dreadful and desolating struggle, destroyed and buried with its victims." How exalted the sense of duty, how glorious the conduct of these children of nature, who, for the salvation of the country, heroically braved the horrors of certain, immediate, and pestilential death. Tread softly, then, on the fields where their ashes are laid; let the wild flowers bloom on their w ide-scattered graves. (35)
1 1 2 Eyam wakes^^
Before commencing the details of the arrival of the fatal box [that carried the plague] in Eyam, it may be interesting to know that the Eyam wakes of that year had only transpired a few days previously to that event: and it is said that this wakes was peculiarly marked by an unusual number of visitors, as if, as was imagined by the few survivors, these visitors who were relatives to the villagers of Eyam, had been involuntarily moved to come and take a last farewell of those who were so very soon after destined to be swept away by the plague. (43)
Portents and causes
At the wakes preceding the first appearance of the pest, some few wanton youths are said to have driven a young cow into the church during divine service; and to this profane act the dreadful visitation was by some ascribed. A persecuted catholic, named GarHck, who was taken prisoner at Padley Hall, in the reign of Elizabeth, is said to have been much abused as he passed in custody, through Eyam, when he said something which has been, by some, construed into a pre&ction of the plague. (122)
The first victim
A] box containing tailor's patterns in cloth was sent from London to a tailor who resided in a small house at the west end of the church-yard and occupied at the present time by a Mr. M arsden.... Whether the patterns and clothes were bought in London for the tailor at Eyam, or sent as a present, cannot now be ascertained. Some, however, say that it was a relative of the tailor at Éyam who sent them, he having procured them in London, where he resided, for a small sum, in consequence of the plague, which was then raging there at its maximum. The box arrived at the tailor's house, Eyam, on the second or third of September, 1665. What the tailor's name was is not satisfactorily known: probably either Thorpe or Cooper. The common belief is, that it was a man-servant, or journeyman tailor, who first opened the box, and not one of the family of the tailor, as is often stated. This is evident from the fact, that Vicars, the name of the first victim, does not occur again in the list of the names of persons died of the plague. And Dr. Mead . . . says the first individual infected was a servant. George Vicars, then, was the person who opened the terrible box. In removing the patterns and clothes, he observed in a sort of exclamation, how very damp they were; and he therefore hung them to the fire to dry. While Vicars was superintending them he was seized with violent sickness and other symptoms of a disease, whidi greatly alarmed the family and neighborhood. On the second day he grew much worse: at intervals he was delirious, and large swellings began to rise about his neck and groin. What medical aid the village afforded was procured, but to no avail. On the third day of his illness the fatal token—the
97 Wakes, or Wakes Week, refers to the annual late-summer festival, held in Eyam and other villages in Derbyshire.
113 plague spot—appeared on his breast, and he died in horrible agonies the following night, the sixth of September, 1 6 6 5 .9 8(45-47)
The plague deaths escalate and then sloio during lomter, only to number many more the folloiuing year
On the last day of September six persons had perished; and by the middle of October twelve more. Consternation and terror reigned throughout the village. The pestilence began to pass from house to house with increasing rapidity....
During the last four months of 1665, the sufferings of the villagers had been truly dreadful; and though they had become familiar with death, yet they were doomed in the following summer, to behold the pest assume a far more deadly and fatal aspect. . . .
The weather at the commencement of 1666 was exceedingly cold and severe, which evidently diminished the baneful influence of the p la g u e .9 9Nothing could exceed the joy manifested by the villagers at there being, as they supposed, some prospect of being delivered from that scourge. The pestilence was now confined to two houses; and on the last day of January only four had died during that month. .. .
On the first of March 1666, the plague had carried off fifty-six souls. Six died in this m onth.... But alas! while Üiese innocent and simple beings were indulging in this vain dream [that the plague was failing], the plague, that subtle and mysterious minister of death, was only resting and gathering strength to make more horrible slaughter. At the commencement of June this deadly monster awoke from his short slumber; and with desolating steps stalked forth from house to house, breathing on the terror-stricken inhabitants the vapour of death. (48-52)
William Mompesson and Thomas Stanley
I shall in this place take the liberty of noticing some few particulars respecting the two unrivalled characters, who may be justly said to have been by their joint exertions, the principal instruments by whom Derbyshire and the neighbouring
98 The Parish Register records this date as September 7, the day of his burial.
99 Cold, dry winter weather typically slowed or even stopped the process of infecting new victims in an outbreak of plague; however, the rate of infection often resumed at a quickened pace when weather turned warmer and wetter during spring and people were weakened after a long, hard winter season.
114 counties were delivered from the desolating plague,—the Rev. Thomas Stanley and the Rev. William Mompesson.ioo
We shall see when we come to the time of the greatest fury of the plague, that the salvation of the surrounding country, originated in the wisdom of these two worthy divines. Their magnanimous conduct on this awful occasion can only be exceeded by the obedience of the sufferers over whom they exercised such heavenly mfluence. (50-51)
Catherine Mompesson's plea
Before his coming to Eyam, in April, 1664, [Mompesson] had married a beautiful young lady, Catherine, the daughter of Ralph Carr, Esq., of Cocken, in the county of Durham. She was young and possessed good parts, with exquisitely tender feelings.... [In Jxme, 1666] Mrs. Mompesson threw herself and two children, George and Elizabeth, of three and foru years old, at the feet of her husband, imploring their immediate departure from the devoted place! Her entreaties and tears sensibly moved the feelings of her husband, whose eyes were suffused with tears by this energetic and truly pathetic appeal... . This affecting contest ended in their mutual consent to send the children away to a relative in Yorkshire, (supposed to be J. Beilby, Esq.), until the pestilence ceased When they departed, she ran to the highest window of their dwelling and watched them leave the village. As she caught the last glance of them, a sudden and startling thought crossed her mind that she should behold them no morel She uttered a shrQl and piercing scream! (51-56)
Mompesson takes the initiative^oi
It was at this period of the calamity (about the middle of June) that the inhabitants began to think of escaping from death by flight. Indeed, the most wealthy of them, who were but few in number, fled early in the spring with the greatest precipitation. Some few others, having means, fled to the neighbouring hills and dells, and there erected huts where they remained until the approach of winter. But it was the visible manifestation of a determination in the whole mass to flee, that aroused Mompesson; he energetically remonstrated with them on the danger of flight; he told them of the fearful consequences that would ensue; that the safety of the surrounding country was in their hands; that it was impossible for them to escape death by flight; that many of them were infected; that the invisible seeds of the disease lay concealed in their clothing and other articles which they were preparing to take with them; and that, if they would relinquish their fatal and terrible purpose, he would write to all the influential persons in
100 Wood makes no direct indication of the political or visionary dissonance between the two positions of Mompesson and Stanley.
101 Although Wood refers to Mompesson and Stanley as joint arbiters of the decision to quarantine the village (see the theme entitled William Mompesson an d Thomas Stanley), he makes no further mention of Stanley's part in the proposal or its enactment.
115 the vicinity for aid; he would by every possible means in his power endeavour to alleviate their sufferings; and he would remain with them, and sacrifice his hfe rather than be instrumental in desolating the surrounding country! Thus spoke this wonderful manl^o^
... The inhabitants, with a superhuman courage, gave up aU thoughts of flight. (56-58)
Mompesson's appeal to the Earl of Devonshire
Mompesson immediately wrote to the Earl of Devonshire, then at Chatsworth, a few rnües from Eyam, stating the particulars of the calamity, and adding that he was certain that he could prevail on his suffering and hourly diniinishing flock to continue themselves within the precincts of the village, if they could be supplied with victuals and other necessary articles, and thereby prevent the pestilence from spreading. The noble Earl expressed his answer in deep commiseration for the sufferers; and he further assured Mompesson, that nothing should be spared on his part to mitigate the calamitous sufferings of the inhabitants—provided they kept themselves within a specified bound. This worthy nobleman, who remained at Chatsworth during the whole time of the plague, generously ordered the sufferers to be supplied with all kinds of necessaries.... (58)
The cordon sanitaire and Mompesson's Well
A kind of circle was drawn round the village, marked by particular and well- known stones and hills; beyond which it was solemnly agreed that no one of the villagers should proceed, whether infected or not. This circle extended about half a mile around the village; and to two or three places or points on this boimdary provisions were brought. A well, or rivulet, northward of Eyam, called to this day, "Mompesson's Well," or "Mompesson's Brook," was one of the places where articles were deposited. These articles were brought very early in the morning, by persons from the adjoining villages, who, when they had delivered them beside the well, fled with the precipitation of panic.... The persons who brought the articles were careful to wash the moneyi03 well before they took it away. (58-59)
102 Considering the probability that the exact persuasive details of this appeal are speculation on the part of Wood, it is interesting that Wood framed Mompesson's argument in terms of the period's medical theories on plague's transmission rather than in terms of God's will.
103 Occasionally, Eyam's villagers left coins in payment for requested goods that were outside the scope of what the Earl of Devonshire provided.
116 Transgressions: The Tideswell Incident and the Bubnell Carter
It is said that no one ever crossed this cordon sanitaire from within our without, during the awful calamity; this, however, is not precisely correct. (59-60)
A woman who resided in that part of Eyam called Orchard Bank, was, during the maximum of the plague, compelled by some pressing exigency to go to the m arket at Xideswelli04; lo w in g , however, that it would be impossible to pass the watch if she told whence she came, she therefore had recourse to the following stratagem. The watch, on her arrival, thus authoritatively addressed her:—"Whence comest thou?" "From Orchard Bank," she replied. "And where is that?" the watch asked again; "Why, verily," said the woman, "it is in the land of the living." The watch, not knowing the place, suffered her to pass; but she had scarcely reached the market when some person knew her and whence she came. "The plague! the plague! a woman from Eyam! the plague! a woman from Eyam!" immediately resounded from aU sides; and the poor creature terrified almost to death, fled as fast as she possibly could. The infuriated multitude followed her at a distance, for near a mile out of the market-place, pelting her with stones, mud, sods, or other missiles. (95-97)
During the plague, a man who lived at Bubnell, near Chatsworth ... had either to come to, or pass through, Eyam, with a load of wood, which he was in the habit of carrying from the woods at Chatsworth to the surrounding villages. His neighbours fervently remonstrated wdth him before his departure, on the impropriety and danger of going near Eyam; being, however, a fine, robust man, he disregarded their admonitions, and proceeded through Eyam with the wood [on a cold, wet day]. ... A severe cold was the result, and shortly after his arrival home he was attacked with a slight fever. The neighbours having ascertained his route, became alarmed at his indisposition; they naturally concluded that he had taken the infection, and they were so incensed at his daring and dangerous conduct, that they threatened to shoot him if he attempted to leave his house. [The then Earl intervened and arranged for a physician to examine the carter.] The interview, either at the suggestion of the Earl, or from the doctor's fear, was appointed to take place across the river Derwent, which flows close by Bubnell. At the appointed time, the doctor took his station on the eastern and the invalid on the western side of the river. The affrighted neighborus looked on from a distance, while the doctor interrogated the sick man at great length. The doctor at last pronounced him free from the disorder. (98- 99)
Closing Eyam's church and other curtailments
Mompesson, deeming it dangerous to assemble in the church during the hot weather, proposed to meet his daily diminishing flock in the Delf, a secluded dingle, a little south of Eyam, and there read prayers twice a week, and deliver his customary sermons on the Sabbath, from a perforated arch in an ivy-mantled
104^ A principal market town about five miles west of Eyam.
117 rock This romantic arch has, from that terrible time, retained its designation of "Cucklet Church."i05 (61-62)
It was during the latter part of June or the beginning of July, that the church-yard closed its gates against the dead. Funeral rites were no longer read; coffins and shrouds no longer thought of; an old door or chair the bier on which the dead were borne; and a shallow grave or hole hastily dug in the fields or gardens round the cottages, received the putrid corpse ere life was quite extinct. (63)
Every family up to July had been, from dire necessity, compelled to bury their own dead; for no one would touch nor even glance at a corpse that did not belong to his own house or family. (65)
The death of Catherine Mompesson
Catherine ... had during the spring, shewn symptoms of pulmonary consumption. She is represented to have been exceedingly beautiful though very delicate. There is a very current tradition in the village, that on the morning of the twenty-second of August, 1666, Mompesson and his wife walked out arm in arm in the fields adjoining the Rectory, as had been their custom for some months in the spring, hoping that the morning air would restore her to convalescence. During this walk she had been dwelling on her usual theme—their two absent children, when, just as they were leaving the last field for their habitation, she suddenly exclaimed: "Oh! Mompesson! the air! how sweet it smells!" These words went through the very soul of Mompessoni 06 ^ and his heart sank within him! He made some evasive reply, and they entered their dwelling. The lapse of a few hours confirmed his fearfrrl anticipation from her remark in the fields: she had taken with the distemper.... She struggled with the invincible pest until the morning of the twenty-fourth, when her spirit took flight to the regions of bliss. (69-70)
Thus this lovely and amiable woman fell a victim to the plague in the twenty- seventh year of her age. Her resolution to abide with her husband in defiance of death, is a striking instance of the strength and purity of female affection. She was interred the day after her death, August the 25th, 1666, in the church-yard at Eyam. Over her ashes, her loving and truly affectionate husband erected a splendid tomb. . . . (71)
105 The Delf is also known as Cucklett Delf, Cucklett Church, and Cussy Dell.
106 A supposed symptom of plague evident only in Eyam plague literature is that one detects a cloying, sweet smell in the air just before the onset of other physical symptoms.
118 Mompesson's letter to his children^^'^
To my children, George and Elizabeth Mompesson, these present with my blessing.
Eyam, August 31, 1666
Dear Hearts,—This brings you the doleful news of your dear mother's death—the greatest loss which ever befel you! I am not only deprived of a kind and loving consort, but you also are bereaved of the most indulgent mother that ever dear children had. We must comfort ourselves in God with this consideration, that the loss is only ours, and that what is our sorrow is her gain. The consideration of her joys, which I do assure myself are unutterable, should refresh our drooping spirits. My children, I think it may be useful to you to have a narrative of your dead mother's virtues, that the knowledge thereof may teach you to imitate her excellent qualities. In the first place, let me recommend to you her piety and devotion, which were according to the exact principles of the Church of England. In the next place, I can assure you, she was composed of modesty and humility, which virtues did possess her dear soul in a most extraordinary manner. Her discourse was ever grave and meek, yet pleasant also; an immodest word was never heard to come from her mouth. She had two other virtues, modesty and frugality. She never valued anything she had, when the necessities of a poor neighbour required it; but had a boimtiful spirit towards the distressed and indigent; yet she was never lavish, but commendably frugal. She never hked tattling women, and abhorred the custom of going house to house, thus wastefuUy spending precious time. She was ever busied in useful work, yet, though prudent, she was affable and kind. ... I do believe, my dear hearts, that she was the kindest wife in the world, and think from my soul, that she loved me ten times better than herself; for she not only resisted my entreaties, that she should fly with you, dear children, from this place of death.... Further, I can assure you, that her love to you was little inferior than to me; since why should she thus ardently desire my continuance in this world of sorrows, but that you might have the protection and comfort of my hfe. You httle imagine with what dehght she talked of you both, and the pains she took when you sucked the milk from her breasts. She gave strong testimony of her love for you when she lay upon her death-bed. A few hours before she expired I wished her to take some cordials, which she told me plainly she could not take. I entreated she would attempt for your dear sakes. At the mention of your names, she with difficulty lifted up her head and took them: this was to testify to me her affection for you. Now I will give you an exact account of the manner of her death. For some time she had shewn symptoms of a consumption, and was wasted thereby. Being surrounded by infected families, she doubtless got the distemper from them; and her natural strength being impaired, she could not struggle with the disease, which made her illness very short. She shewed much contrition for the errors of her past hfe, and often cried out,—"One drop of my Saviour's blood, to
107 The original copy of this letter is now lost, but Wood and Charles Seward claim to have viewed the original.
119 save m y soul." She earnestly desired me not to come near her, lest I should receive harm thereby; but, thank God, I did not desert her, but stood my resolution not to leave her in her sickness, who had been so tender a nurse to me in her health. Blessed be God, that He enabled me to be so helpful and consoling to her, for which she was not a little thankful. During her Ulness she was not disturbed by worldly business—she only minded making her call and election sure; and she asked pardon of her maid, for having sometimes given her an angry word. I gave her some sweating antidotes, which rather inflamed her more, whereupon her dear head was distempered, which put her upon many incoherencies. I was troubled thereat, and propounded to her questions in divinity. Though in all other things she talked at random, yet to these religious questions, she gave me as rational answers as could be desired. I bade her repeat after me certain prayers, which she did with great devotion,—it gave me comfort that God was so gracious to her. A little before she died, she asked me to pray with her again. I asked her how she did? The answer was, that she was looking when the good hour should come. Thereupon I prayed, and she made her responses from the Common Prayer Book, as perfecüy as in her health and an "Amen" to every pathetic expression. When we had ended the prayers for the sick, we used Üiose from the Whole Duty of Man! and when I heard her say nothing, I said, "My dear, dost thou mind?"i 08 She answered, "Yes," and it was the last word she spoke. My dear babes, the reading of this account will cause many a salt tear to spring firom your eyes; yet let this comfort you,—your mother is a saint in heaven. No, to that blessed God, who bestowed upon her all "those graces," be ascribed all honour, glory, and dominion, the just tribute of all created beings, for ever more.—Amen!
William Mompesson (72-75)
Mompesson's "saddest letter"W9
Eyam, Septem ber 1, 1666
Honoured and dear sir,—This is the saddest news that ever my pen could write. The destroying Angel having tciken up his quarters within my habitation, my dearest wife is gone to her eternal rest, and is invested with a crown of righteousness, having made a happy end. Indeed had she loved herself as well as me, she had fled from the pit of destruction with the sweet babes, and might have prolonged her days; but she was resolved to die a martyr to my interests. My drooping spirits are much refreshed with her joys, which I think are unutterable. Sir, this paper is to bid you a hearty farewell for ever, and to bring you my humble thanks for all your noble favours; and I hope you will believe a dying man, I have as much love as honour for you, and I will bend my feeble knees to
108 "Are you following (or paying attention)?"
109 Written to his friend and patron. Sir George Saville. At the time he wrote this, Mompesson believed that he was dying of plague too.
1 2 0 the God of Heaven, that you, my dear lady, and your children, may be blessed with external and eternal happiness, and that the same blessing may fall upon Lady Sunderland and her relations. Dear Sir, let your dying Chaplain recommend this truth to you and your family, that no happiness or solid comfort can be found in this vale of tears, hke Living a pious life___
W illiam M om pesson (76-77)
The romance ofEmmot Sydall and Rowland TorreT-i-O
When the plague broke out in the latter end of the summer of 1665, there lived in a humble straw-thatched cottage, a little west of the church, a very happy and contented family, named Sydall: consisting of husband, wife, five daughters, and one son. The father, son, and four daughters, took the infection and died in the space of twenty-five days, in October, 1665; leaving the hapless mother and one daughter. The mother had now nothmg to render her disconsolate case bearable but her only surviving daughter Emmot, a modest and pretty village maiden. Emmot had for some time received the fervent addresses of a youth named Rowland, who resided in Middleton Dalem, about a mile south-east of Eyam. He had daily visited her and sympathised with her on the death of her father, brother, and four young sisters. Often had she anxiously remonstrated with him on the danger of his visits; but nothing could deter him firom nightly pacing the devoted village, until the death-breathing pest threatened total desolation to the surrounding country, if intercourse were allowed. The happy scene when Rowland and Emmot were to cast their lots together, had been appointed to take place at the ensuing wakes; and fervently did they pray that the pestilence would cease.. .. Towards the end of April, 1666, the lovely Emmot was seized by the terrific pest, and hurried to her grave on the thirtieth of the same month. Rowland heard a brief rumour of dreadful tidings and his hopes were scattered.... It was some time after the plague had ceased that Rowland summoned up sufficient courage to enter the village, and to leam the fate of his Emmot.... At length he ventured into the silent village, but he suddenly stopped, looking as much aghast as if he had seen the portentous inscription which met the eye of Dante when the shade of Virgil led hum to the porch of Erebus.... Then towards the cot of his Emmot he bent his way. His direful forebodings increased with every step. As he approached the dwelling his heart swelled and beat with painful emotion; but ere he reached the place a solitary boy appeared and thus the sorrowful tidings told:—"Ah! Rowland, thy Emmot's dead and hurried in the Cussy Dell!" (87-91)
"110 Notice Wood's adoption of a narrative style and formula very similar to Marchen at the beginning of this interlude.
111 Near Stoney Middleton, outside Eyam's plague boundary.
1 2 1 The recovery of Margaret Blackzuell
Some few who had the plague, in Eyam, recovered; the first was a Margaret Blackwell. The tradition says that she was about sixteen or eighteen years of age when she took the distemper; and that her father and whole family were dead, excepting one brother, at the time of her sickness. Her brother was one morning obliged to go to some distance for coals; and he arose very early, cooked himself some bacon, and started, being certain, as he said, that he should find his sister dead when he came back. Margaret, almost dying with excessive thirst, got out of bed for something to drink; and finding a small wooden piggin with something in which she thought was water, but which was the fat from the bacon which her brother had just cooked, she drank it all off, returned to bed again, and found herself soon after rather better. On her brother's return he found her, to his great surprise, much better; she eventually recovered, and lived to a good old age. Chinking adventitiously the contents of the wooden piggin, has generally been considered the cause of her unexpected resuscitation. (92-93)
The Riley^^2 graves
Riley Graves are about a quarter of a mile eastward of Eyam, on the top or rather on the slope of a hill, the base of which partially terminates in Eyam. These m ountain tumuli are generally known to be the burial places of the Hancock family during the plague.... The pest now passed on to the habitation of the Hancocks, where die work of death commenced by the infection of John and Elizabeth Hancock. On the third of A ugust... they both died, and were buried a short distance from their cottage, by the hands of their distracted mother. John, her husband, and two sons, William and Oner, now sickened of this virulent m alady.... During the night of the sixth. Oner died, and her husband a few minutes after, and before morning, William gave his last struggling gasp.... Dreading to touch the putrid bodies, she—as she had done by the others—tied a towel to their feet, and dragged them on the ground in succession to their graves. The end of two short days, from the seventh to the ninth, saw her again digging another grave among the blooming heath for her daughter Alice. On the morning of the next day, the tenth, Ann, her only child left at home, died and was buried. .. . On the headstones the inscriptions are as follows:
Elizabeth Hancock, Buried Aug. 3,1666 John Hancock, Buried Aug. 3,1666 Oner Hancock, Buried Aug. 7,1666 WiUiam Hancock, Buried Aug. 7,1666 Alice Hancock, Buried Aug. 9,1666 Ann Hancock, Buried Aug. 10, 1666 (104-107)
112 Riley, not to be mistaken to be a surname, is the local name for the open hillside eastward and above Eyam. There were two farms there at the time of the plague-
1 2 2 Marshall Howe
... as was now frequently the case [when] one died in a house and the others were dying, some person was necessitated, however dangerous the task, to undertake the removal of the unsightly corpse, and instantly to bury it. For this hazardous but necessary purpose, the All-wise Providence had endowed with sufficient nerve, hardihood, and indifference, the person of Marshall Howe, a native of the village, a man of gigantic stature, and of the most undaimted courage.... Covetousness or avarice seems to have instigated him in part, to undertake his perilous vocation. Through burying the last victims of the pesthouses, he took whatever he found therein.... The money, furniture, clothes, and other effects of the deceased were his unenviable remuneration.... Such was the awful occupation of Marshall Howe during the most horrible ravages of the plague. For a generation or two after the plague, parents in Eyam endeavoured to bring their children to rule and obedience by telling them that they w ould send for M arshall H owe. (66-67)
The final toll
Of the number who perished at Eyam by the hand of the direful plague, there are different accounts. The Register, which is undoubtedly as correct as can be expected from the confusion of the time, states the number of victims to be 259.. . . This devastation is certainly appalling, when the amount of population at the commencement of the calamity is considered, which amount has generally been stated at 330. From the number of families visited by the plague, mentioned in the subsequent letter of Mompessonii3, it would, I opine, be nearer the mark, to say 350, or perhaps a few more. (82-83)
Mompesson's third letter^^^
Eyam, Nov. 20, 1666.
Dear Sir,—I suppose this letter will seem to you no less than a miracle, that my habitation is inter vivos. I have got these lines transcribed by a friend, being loth to affright you with a letter from my hands.^s You are sensible of my state, the loss of the kindest wife in the world, whose life was amiable and end most comfortable. She was in an excellent posture when death came, which fills me with assurances that she is now invested with a crown of righteousness. 1 find
H 3 See Mompesson's November 20,1666 letter to John Beilby, below.
Written to John Beilby, Mompesson's uncle in Yorkshire, shortly after it became apparent that the plague had finally left Eyam. Some phrases from this letter are perhaps the most quoted lines of text in all of the sources on Eyam, particularly the statement that "Our town has become a Golgotha, the place of a skull."
115 For fear of contagion.
123 this maxim, verified by too sad experience: Bonum magis carendo quam fruendo cemitiir. Had I been as thankful as my condition did deserve, I might have had my dearest dear in my bosom. But now farewell all happy days, and God grant that I may repent my sad ingratitude! The condition of the place has been so sad, that I persuade myself it did exceed all history and example. Our town has become a Golgotha, the place of a skullii6; and had there not been a small remnant, we had been as Sodom, and Hke to Gomorrah. My ears never heard such doleful lamentations—my nose never smelled such horrid smells, and my eyes never beheld such ghastly spectacles. There have been 76 families visited within my parish, out of which 259 persons died. Now (blessed be God) all of our fears are over, for none have died of the plague since the eleventh of October, and the pest houses have been long empty. I intend (God willing) to spend this week in seeing all woollen clodies fumed and purified, as well for the satisfaction as for the safety of the country. Here have been such burning of goods that the like, I think, was never known. For my part, I have scarcely apparel to shelter my body, having wasted no more than I needed merely for example ----
WdHam M om pesson (85-87)
The Influence of Wood's H istory on Subsequent Eyam Plague Literature
Having covered the major characters, episodes, and themes presented in Wood's book, we have gone a long way toward characterizing the majority of available versions of the Eyam plague story. Because Eyam is a community with a celebrated history, it would be foUy to assert that all renditions of the story are homogeneous. In absolute terms, they are as individual as their authors, performers, audiences, and their infinite contexts of production and consumption. Even so, circumstances in Eyam during this decade and the whole of the past century have privileged certain authors and given buoyancy to their renditions in favor of others, perpetuating a very particular point of view. A s already explained. Wood's version is the vox prima in this congregation of performers, and the additional voices which remain most accessible resemble Wood's to a notable degree.
116 Golgotha is the Hebrew word for the mount in Jerusalem—also known as Calvary—where Christ is said to have been crucified.
124 Wood was actually the first in a continuing lineage of Eyam historians who lived in or near the village. Before the final edition of The History and Antiqidties of Eyam w as published, another Derbyshire man published an extensive narrative account of Eyam's plague. Edward Hoare, Vicar of Stoneycroft, released his novel The Brave Men of Eyam:
A Tale of the Plague Year in 1881. The Brave Men of Eyam w as w ritten to be a very engaging popular account, what we would today call historical fiction. In Hoare's own words, "The object of the book is to teU, in a popular form, the tale of a 'mighty woe,' and to convey an impression—correct, so far as the author can make it so—to the reader's mind of the times in which, and people by whom, this great 'trial of affliction' was so heroically endured among the Derbyshire hills" (1). On what evidence did Hoare base his novel? On Wood, of course. Comparing the table of contents of Hoare's book with the list of W ood's elements^^^ articulated earlier in this chapter (taken out of order here) one can readily see Hoare's debt to Wood (Figure 3).
117 The captions attributed to Wood are not his own words; he did not use headings in his book. They have been added here for the purpose of comparison.
125 HOARE WOOD
The Wakes (a) Eyam wakes (a) Playing at C hurch (b) Portents and causes (b) Thomas Stanley (c) William Mompesson and Thomas Stanley (c) Village Gossips (b) The first victim (d) The First A larm (d) The plague deaths slow during winter, only The Shadow of the C loud (e) to hasten the following sp rin g (e) Two Good Men (c) Catherine Mompesson's plea (1) "The Angel of Death" (f) Mompesson takes the initiative (j) The Terror (g) Mompesson's appeal to the Earl of Row land "M akes Friends" (h) Devonshire (j) Talbot of Riley Forge (i) The cordon sanitaire & M om pesson's W ell (k) "As Silver is Refined" (h) Transgressions: The Tideswell incident and Hopes and Fears the Bubnell carter (n) A Midnight Consultation (j) Closing Eyam's church and other The Contagion of Heroism (j) curtailments (m) The Bitter Choice (k) The death of Catherine Mompesson (p) The Journey into Yorkshire (1) Mompesson's letter to his children (r) Cucklett Church (m) Mompesson's "saddest letter" (r) "Give a Dog a Bad Name" (n) The romance of Emmot Sydall and Rowland Steb and Rowland Take a Walk (o) Torre (h, q) "Farewell, All Happy Days" (p) The recovery of Margaret Blackwell In Search of Certainty (q) The Riley graves (i, o) Conclusion Marshall Howe (g) The final toU (f) Appendices: Mompesson's third letter (r) Mompesson's Three Letters (r) Thomas Stanley (c)
Figure 3. A comparison of topics that appear in Hoare’s and Wood’s books. Items bearing matching letters share the same general content.
The content of Hoare's book appears almost certainly to have been modeled on
Wood's (Hoare cites Wood frequently). There are some notable philosophical
differences, however, which are taken up by various authors afterward. Hoare may
have been the first prominent author—novelist or historian—to have adopted the
position that former rector Thomas Stanley instead of Mompesson was the figure
responsible for conceiving of and advocating the heroic plan. Perhaps this arose from his opinions as a clergyman and reflects Hoare's own politics, but it is impossible to say
for certain. Hoare weaves his well-written episodes around the story line of Emmot
126 Sydall's and Rowland Thorpe's romance, providing what G.R. Batho feels is "perhaps the best, as it is certainly one of the most restrained, of the many Victorian novels on the theme" (82-83). After Hoare and Wood came a deluge of narrative treatments of the plague story, most bearing the hallmarks of strong influence by Wood. Marjorie Bowen's novel God and the Wedding Dress (1938), Monica Thome's play entitled "The Sweet Air," and Jill Paton Walsh's novella A Parcel of Patterns (1983) are am ong the entrants in the challenge of portraying the Eyam plague in fresh ways. These works and many others incorporate elements first described in Wood. The fictional, poetic, and dramatic renditions are innumerable, yet they are often very difficult to find because many were produced locally and did not make it into the mainstream of the publishing industry.
Another important genre in the corpus of materials on Eyam's plague is the travelogue or tourist guide. Through today's academic library system in the United
States, one can find numerous visitors' guides to the counties and specific sites of
England; in England, the number of such guides that are available is truly mind boggling.
Beginning as early as the sixteenth century with the works of European and English authors such as Celia Fiennes, John Leland, Daniel Defoe, and Joseph Turner, an unhalfing industry in the production of local descriptions and guides has produced works that cover almost every acre of habitable and visitable land in England. Needless to say, Eyam and its plague figure into almost aU of those focusing on Derbyshire and the Peak which were produced after the plague. Although the material in these works on
Eyam and other Derbyshire sites is fascinating and offers plentiful opportunities for research and comparison, it would be a trivial pursuit to attempt to discuss them as a whole in this study. It is very important, however, that the representatives of this genre be counted in the estimation of how Eyam's story is remembered today, for they have been many people's first (or only) introduction to the plague story.
127 Most of the travelogue accounts were at one time or still are available at venues
normally associated with tourists: the Peak District National Park Visitors Centre, local
parish churches' book stalls, gift shops, and local commercial book stores. Although it is
natural that variations in the narratives and themes have occurred. Wood's influence on
these accounts of Eyam's plague is still obvious. J. B. Firth, whose Highways and Byways
of Derbyshire was first published in 1905, provides a typical reduction of the Eyam
plague story in a chapter called "Eyam and the Plague: Bretton Clough and Highlow."
Citing Wood, Firth's synopsis consists of an abbreviated version of the Wood history.^^^
Similarly reduced accounts have always been very easy to come by, including chapters in
Nellie Kirkham's Derbyshire (1947), Crichton Porteous's Derbyshire (1950), D avid
Clarke's Ghosts & Legends of the Peak District (1991), and Elizabeth Eisenberg's Tales of
Old Derbyshire (1992) to name just a few. Beyond fairly stable accounts such as these
(that is, many are still in print and can be found in book stores and libraries), there is an endless stream of much more ephemeral pamphlets, brochures, tour guides, hiking maps, museum displays, handouts, menu inserts, and other media that provide very brief accounts of Eyam's plague. Of course, they are far too numerous to account for here. It should come as no surprise, however, to leam that they too generally exhibit the influence of Wood's original account.
There are, of course, highly divergent and even critical points of view in the range of literature concerning Eyam's plague. We have already mentioned the controversy over differing estimates for Eyam's population in 1665. That debate still persists, even if it appears that it is only because the lower population estimates are compelling and not because they are thoroughly convincing. Beginning with Hoare's Brave Men of Eyam and
118 It is not surprising that Firth's page headings—topical, page by page—resemble the sort of Woodsian motif index sketched out in this chapter: "Mompesson's Heroism," "Pathetic Letters," "Riley Graves," "Mompesson's Well," "The Cucklet Church," and so on (356-65).
128 continuing through today's new works, specific matters of interpretation occasionally face their challenges. Hence, many writers in this century have automatically tended to count Vicar Stanley as Mompesson's equal partner in leading the village through the plague; others claim vociferously that it was Stanley who showed all the nerve and that
Mompesson has simply ridden an extraordinarily good wave of successful public relations. Over the past thirty years or so (dating to the plague's tercentenary observance in Eyam), most of the challenges to the narrative's status quo have originated in the academic sector. Historians (Batho, Bradley, Slack 1985, Clifford), ethnographers
(Clarke), and medical researchers (Mullett, Twigg) have singled out discreet elements of the story and subjected them to varying degrees of analysis, often by teams of researchers. Sometimes this research is credible and intriguing, sometimes it is not.
W hat is clear is that the details of Eyam's plague remain as compelling for researchers as for tourists and other enthusiasts. In the next chapter, we will examine the works of 20th century local Eyam historians in the context of the present-day village's presentation of itself.
129 CHAPTER 5
'PARTICULAR VIEWS": DEVELOPMENT CONTROLS
THAT HAVE AN IMPACT ON EYAM
Scene: Anyzuhere in England or Wales, present day
Problem: Yon consider purchasing a new digital satellite dish system for yoiir home
Action: You open to page four ofHouseholder's A Planning Guide for the Installation of
Satellite Television Dishes^^^ to the section entitled "Is a Planning Application
Required?" You read out loud from the G uide;
1. Do you live in a house that is n ot in a conservation area, a National Park, an Area of Outstanding Beauty or the Norfolk Broads?
[If yes] Then you do not need to apply for planning permission to install a dish on that house, provided that:
• there will not be more than one dish on the building or in the garden;
• the dish does not exceed 70 cm in size, or, if you live in one of the following counties, it is not more than 90 cm in size: Cleveland, Cornwall, Cumbria, Devon, Durham, Dyfed, Greater Manchester, Gwynedd, Humberside, Lancashire, Merseyside, Northiunberland, North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear, West Glamorgan, West Yorkshire;
• if the dish is installed on the roof, it does not protrude above the highest part of the roof;
• in the case of an instaUation on a chimney stack, the dish does not exceed 45 cm in size and is not higher than the highest part of the stack.
119 Published by the Department of the Environment and the Welsh Office, 1992; 91PLAN0297.
130 You have just completed questionnaire section one of three. If you do not fall under the jurisdiction of section one, please move on to section two; othenuise, you must apply for permission from your local planning authority. .. .
W hat the Guide is trying to articulate—and has difficulty doing because of the dense specificity of its regulations—is that unless you live in a specially governed place such as a conservation area or national park, you are allowed to install a small satellite dish without special dispensation if the dish is concealed as thoughtfidly as possible luithin reasonable limits. This applies to private property owners all across England and Wales.
If, how ever, you do Hve in a specially governed area—and there are many of them—then the task before you is automatically much more arduous. The preface to the dish- placement booklet iterates the official rationale behind England's and Wales' satellite- dish regulations. It states that
The purpose of this guide is:
First to protect our environment from unnecessarily large, unsympathetic or poorly sited satellite dishes.
Second to make you, as a householder, aware of the need for the appropriate siting of satellite dishes.
Third to help retailers and installers provide improved advice and service to householders on the siting of satellite dishes.
Considering the complexity of the policy system which governs a thing as simple and ubiquitous as a small digital sateUite dish, one must eventually ask So what is at stake? Wlwt is to be gained by the regidation? and What zuill be lost if these controls fail?
These are questions we will try to answer after a close examination of the major planning and preservation authorities that bear on Eyam. Eyam is an excellent case to study because it not only falls naturally under the jurisdiction of England's national
131 laws but also within the purviews of several additional authorities—all at the same
time. Because it is one of the most-regulated vicinities in all of England and because it is
also one of the most visited, Eyam is a living laboratory for understanding the goals and
effects of planning regulations on a specific community whose interests the regulations
are designed (at least in part) to protect.
This chapter presents an overview of planning and development organizations
that have an influence on Eyam village. Because many Eyam villagers feel that their
ways of life^"° are under assault by tourist, preservation, and development pressures not
of their own making, it is useful to investigate the terminologies and categories of interest
that major development authorities assert in their stewardships of the Eyam area. Most
directly, Eyam is under the control of the Peak District National Park which encircles it.
The Peak Park is responsible for both encouraging public access to the Park's areas
(including villages) and protecting its natural and historical features. How the Park
determines which features of its domain are preservation-worthy in and around villages such as Eyam is extremely important. After all, any village like Eyam is much more than just a collection of occupied structures scattered about a landscape; it is a community of human beings—a culture—that inhabits the site and makes it meaningful in historical and fleetingly contemporary terms. Consequently, the way planning authorities understand and handle culture within their policies has a significant influence on how well those policies mitigate against unnecessary cultural disruption. If the policies respect culture in sophisticated ways, then the groups living under their control stand a good chance of finding satisfaction; if they fail to respect culture and instead flatten it, oversimplify it, or effectively ignore it altogether, then the situation can easily become
120 Here 1 refer to their ways of Hfe in a very basic sense concerning the abilities and rights to earn a living, move freely about the area, and maintain a level of privacy in their own dwellings and gardens.
132 ripe for avoidable conflict, disruption, and unhappiness. As this chapter will
demonstrate, the Peak Park responds to and advances the planning worldviews of
larger organizations such as the UK Department of the Environment, Transport, and the
Regions and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO). As the major local participant in a large planning framework consisting of
these organizations and others, the Peak Park has inherited a flawed view of culture and
enacts a planning scheme that unnecessarily inflicts hardships, frustrations, and
unwanted changes on the Eyam community.
It has been argued that the United States is the land of plenty where unlimited
resources, manifest destiny, suburban utOity vehicles, and opportunistic entitlements are
matters of worldview (see Baer, Dundes, Dorson) owing—at least initially—to the sheer
expanse of its territory. If that is so, then it can Likewise be said that the English
worldview is shaped by the English people's persistent awareness of the limitedness of
their resources and the very tangible boundaries of their entitlements atop an island off
the coast of Europe. The English are crazy about the natural beauty of their island and
the appeal and rich historical associations of its ancient built environment. Fueling their
zeal is a sense of the island's preciousness and acutely finite boundaries. As Thomas
Dibdin wrote in a nineteenth century poem, "Oh, it's a snug little island!/A right little,
tight little island." Perhaps as a consequence of this worldview, the English maintain a pronounced national preoccupation with their own heritage in which claims to the environment are repeatedly and implicitly asserted. They jealously guard their right to surround themselves in their history and experience it firsthand while on holiday, in school, or simply as enthusiasts.
One of today's most significant cultural and institutional methods for accessing
English history is through the tool of heritage preservation. With it, the English cultural
133 past is democratized, commodified, and given handles by which its various purveyors may package it and consumers may make it their own through consumption in what
Robert Cantwell calls "a new stratum of cultural life" that emerges to "frame, isolate, and appropriate" specific visions of the past (45-46). Heritage preservation, fike environmental preservation, is essentially a norming, interpretive process which requires subjective determinations to be made concerning dynamic systems that otherwise resist comparison. You find a lot of apples and oranges in the preservation business.
Americans know these dilemmas well: Does a wood duck deserve to be preserved more than a Mexican wolf or a mud-skipper or a sequoia or a logger? Probably not, but preservationists (and their opponents) firequently have to decide anyway.
Such decisions require the assertion of common measures. They have emerged where needed throughout the Western world. For example, the American National
Trust, which facilitates the preservation and cataloging of structures with historical significance, has an elaborate guidance policy that begins with the primary credential of age: a "listed" structure must be at least 50 years old. Of course it is unlikely that there is anyone directly involved with the National Trust who would insist that a 50-year-old structure is inherently more valuable than one which is only 48 or 49 years old, but the rriinimiun age requirement enables the system to constitute itself. The same goes for heritage preservation.
The United Kingdom has a set—many layers, in fact—of established planning guidelines and restrictions that apply generally to most areas of the country. Thus, as we have already seen, the UK Department of the Environment has arrived at enforceable national codes for placing digital satellite dishes—which boggles the mind because satellite dishes appear to be just one relatively minute form of endlessly numerous potential intrusions into some ideal vision of the English environment. The system, one
134 starts to think, must be ponderous, ineffable. The UK's national planning guidelines
represent a framework of rules administered locally that guide development in order to protect the English, Welsh, Irish, and Scottish environments while permitting sustainable
growth^-^ (in economic and demographic terms), balanced for the long-term benefit of
the public. The layers of systems seek to govern many features of the English natural
and cultural pasts: wildlife, flora, and geography; architecture, lemdscape, and archaeological remains; local economy, community, and traditional social structures. For an American accustomed to living in a city like Columbus, Ohio, the influence of the
United Kingdom's many planning authorities can be an eye-popping surprise; living in a village such as Eyam, the intricate and demanding network of codes can easily be perceived as a major and unbalanced obstacle against normal life and opportunities.
For the community of Eyam, living an everyday life means conforming to guidelines, laws, and plans that belong to at least six complementary but distinct organizations who claim an interest in preserving aspects of Eyam's heritage:
1. the U.K. Department of the Environment, Transport, and the Regions;
2. the National Trust;
3. English Heritage
4. the East Midlands Regional Planning Authority
5. the Derbyshire Dales Development Council; and
6.; the Peak District National Park.
121 Sustainable growth, or sustainable development, is referred to often in English planning programs, public grant competitions, and local economic initiatives. The concept entered the lexicon of the preservation field with a number of United Nations resolutions on the preservation of key world environments in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s (Jakobson; Simons; UN 1962, 1972).
135 These are regional and national in scope and regulate matters concerning many, many
public, private, and commercial interests. As if that may not be burdensome enough,
there are other organizations that—while more distant in terms of organizational centers
and magnitudes of direct impact—that help shape national (and thus local) policies and
the trends and fashions of preservation and development themselves. Eyam's
community dwells under a demanding and intricate policy burden, and what follows is
a survey of some of its major contributors.
Layers of Preservation
When exarnining England's preservation policies, there are several points one
needs to bear in mind. One, they were not generated according to a predetermined and
comprehensive plan. Instead, preservation as it is conducted today developed as the
result of multiple efforts over decades under the influence of many governmental,
private, corporate, grassroots local, and educational initiatives in England and
internationally. Two, English preservation did not develop in a vacuum. It bears
significant resemblances to preservation initiatives elsewhere in the world, especially to
those of the United Nations. Three, it may very well be impossible to fashion a
comprehensive view of the vectors and effects of all preservation and related planning
initiatives in England. They are as various as there are English places and things to be preserved and opinions about how (and if) it should be done. And so it should be
understood that this survey proposes only to exhibit the major factors that impinge on
Eyam village today.
Early Organized and Grassroots Preservation Activities in England
Outside of the academy, architectural preservation was among the first preservation movements to make a big splash in England, especially in the later part of
136 the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth centuries (Summerson; Hewison;
Lowenthal 1994,1996). In love with their history rich island, the English have long been
interested in organized preservation initiatives. This interest was at one time intimately
linked with the new salvage scholarships of popular antiquities, archaeology, and the
classics, in which the English were leading participants since at least the nineteenth
century. It was in the nineteenth century that, as new nation states began to
industrialize and education initiatives began to diminish widespread illiteracy, the
discipline of folklore studies began to form out of the popular antiquities, archaeology,
and historical societies fields and movements (see Zumwalt, Dorson). By 1847, the term folk-lore was coined and massive collection projects of many kinds had been undertaken by scholars and amateurs who believed that ancient knowledge, expressions, and even
entire ways of life (all of which constituted popular antiquities for example) were
threatened by the promise of industrialization.
The first line of defense was documentation and cataloging. Since the ways of preindustrialized folk were believed to be dying out, the best thing to do was to observe, describe, and index as many of them as possible in the hope that later generations would be able to appreciate and study what were believed to be primitive expressions of extinct, preliterate cultures. In that day as literacy was leaping, researchers (many in university literature departments) were interested mostly in oral verbal forms: Marchen, epics, ballads, tall tales, proverbs, omens, portents, children's rhymes, and so on. Thus we enjoy massive historically interesting and awe-inspiring indexical works such as the tale type and motif indices of Antti Aame, Stith Thompson, and Emest Baughman today. Such catalogs are much less seriously used now than they were decades ago, but they convincingly hint at the fervor and amazing devotion brought to the efforts by early preservationists.
137 E>uring the second half of the nineteenth century when these fledgling academic
disciplines were forming, a groundswell of private societies for the preservation of
English treasures—mostly architectural and archaeological at first—began to appear.
William Morris's Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and the English
National Trust were founded in 1895 for the shared general purpose of protecting the
English environment from industrialization and "uncontrolled development" (National
Trust 1999). Among the formal devices that soon followed were the government's own
Ancient Monuments Act (1912) and the Country Planning Act (1944), both of which
echoed concerns of the grassroots groups that had organized themselves in the preceding
decades. The Ancient Monuments Act and the Town and Country Act gave England
what architectural historian John Summerson proudly referred to in 1947 as
"preservation on a scale more systematic and comprehensive than any country [has] at
any time proposed" (219-220). The devastation wrought upon England's built
environment during the Second World War prompted a tremendous sense of shared
purpose in the preservation of tangible connections to the English past. The English had
watered and tended an interest in their own cultural history and transformed it into a
national concern with concrete policy implications. They were also taking advantage of
every domestic and international tool with which to situate it in practice.
The United Nations and the Emergence of a Formal Cultural Heritage Protection System
While comparison between national and international programs is useful for documentary and evaluative purposes, the following discussion should also remind us that issues facing preservationists (and residents) in England are very much the same in the major contexts of Europe, the United States, and other countries. Being sensitive to the nature and consequences of preservation in England is a credible start to
138 understanding basic preservation issues in other countries, and vice versa. When
discussing England's preservation policies, one temptation is to focus only on the
English cultural, legal, and political circumstances that have led to today's conditions.
For the present discussion, however, it appears that the United Nations' major premises
and initiatives concerning preservation have a great deal in common with English
policies and the major (and conspicuously undefined) assumptions that inform them. I
do not for a minute mean to suggest that the flow of influence has been strictly
downward from the UN to England (and other countries) in some pyramidic scheme;
nor do I believe that the fimdamental similarities between policies and visions are ptuely
coincidental either. Ultimately, this discussion is fueled by what I believe to be English preservation's detectable reliance on visions, definitions, and precedents articulated and enacted by the UN since the 1940s.
The United Nations was officially created on October 24,1945 when its Charter was ratified by the United States, the United Kingdom, China, France, the Soviet Union, and other countries. It was created as a response to the incredible turmoil and losses of the many nations involved in two world wars and localized international conflicts in the first five decades of the twentieth century (Simons 51-56; UN 1995). Although the UN was concerned from the start with major causes such as human rights and international cooperation, its charter begins with the clear commitment to "save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our Hfetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind. . ." (UN 1995).
Although the UN pieced itself together in the 1940s with this firm commitment to end and avoid war, it might surprise most people to leam that less than 30 percent of the UN's activities today are devoted expressly to peacekeeping (Yoder 145). The rest, according to the UN (1995), is dedicated to development and humanitarian assistance.
139 By development, the UN (like most other development and planning organizations)
generally means economic and infrastructural improvement^^ such as town planning
and tourism management through economic and business incentives. Today, the United
Nations calls itself "the only global institution for furthering development" (UN 1995).
Its vast system channels a huge $25 billion in grants and loans annually to programs in
135 countries.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) is a broad official arm of the UN, established little more than a year after
the UN was founded. Envisioned as a mechanism for promoting world peace and prosperity through "the intellectual and moral solidarity of mankind" (1945) and
advancing the goals of several earlier movements^^, UNESCO presumed to provide a global charter for the protection of educational and cultural things of value. UNESCO and its precedent organizations advocated the premise that the world enjoys major intellectual and cultural resources whose values cross national boundaries. UNESCO, formed in this context, was created to:
... contribute to peace and security by promoting collaboration among nations through education, science and culture in order to further universal respect for justice, for the rule of law and for human rights and fundamental freedoms which are affirmed for the peoples of the world. . . . (1945)
122 The UN does not define development as an operative term, but the 1987 UN document called "Our Common Future" made the term sustainable development a critical one.
123 Important actions that preceded it include two Hague Conventions (1899, 1907), the Washington Pact (1935), the International Committee of Intellectual Cooperation (1922-1946), the International Institute of Intellectual Co-operation (1925-1946), and the International Bureau of Education (1925-1968). The International Board of Education operated independently of the UN from 1945-1968 and was incorporated into the UNESCO Secretariat in 1969.
140 Through UNESCO, the UN's mission was officially augmented to include a species of
preventive medicine which would ultimately (by the 1990s) lead to international policy
frameworks for the protection of cultural property, world heritage, and the built and
natural environments. UN historian Max Jakobson notes that "Linking assistance to
human rights and democracy or to arms control... fundamentally changed the context
in which the issue of economic development is considered" (145). Thus planning,
humanitarianism, and culture were politicized together in the sphere of development.^-"^
During the last fifty years of the twentieth century, the UN and its divisions
revised and refined their preservation missions through a series of conventions and
decrees, usually at a rate of several major proclamations per decade. It is a well known
axiom that if you want to complicate something simple, you should assign a committee
to it. The specific path that the UN bureaucracies took to pose, reflect on, probe, and
revise their functional definitions of w hat constituted preservable treasures and heritage is
a lamentably safe and sterile one. They generally cover material aspects of history and
cultures while overlooking esoteric, performative, behavioral aspects of the same history
and cultures. Folklorists and other cultural policy specialists in the United States today
have for decades been comfortable with acting strongly on the conviction (and even rule
of law) that intangible aspects of a culture are critical to the understanding and
conservation of that culture, yet fifty years of conventions at the UN have yielded a
decidedly unbalanced fixation on the tangible. Whether it is coincidence or some
124 Many projects Hke the Bakewell Project in the vicinity of Eyam in the mid-1990s use the term economic development to explain and justify their goals. The Bakewell Project is a major economic and social development initiative funded largely by grants and local taxes. Bakewell, a historic market town near Eyam, is undergoing demographic and economic changes that are shifting the town's focus away from its (literally) market economy and toward more suburban- and tourism-oriented pursuits. In the name of preserving the essential character of the town, great expenditures of money and other resources are going into incentives for structuré renovation and encouraging targeted cultural groups to take up or maintain residence and, in principle, preserve the historic town ("A Summary of the Bakewell Project," The Bakewell Project Office).
141 measure of consanguinity, English visions and policies for preservation during the same
half-century period have been similarly partial to the material side of culture. Although
it is tempting to recount the developments step by step in their excruciating and
revealing deliberateness, that may be more profitably left for an essay on another day.
In the meantime, a synopsis of developments in UN policy can easily illustrate the
escalation of a bias toward the tangible.
UNESCO's Hague Convention (May 14,1954)—the "Convention for the
Protection of Culhual Property in the Event of Armed Conflict"—uses the term heritage
for the first time and states that "damage to cultural property belonging to any people
whatsoever means damage to the cultural heritage of all mankind." This statement
obliquely identified the problem: Hozv does the loorld go about preserving its cultural
heritages? First, of course, it has to define the terms, also written into the Convention:
For the purposes of the present Convention, the term "cultural property" shall cover, irrespective of origin or ownership:
(a) movable or immovable property ... such as monuments of architecture, art or history, whether religious or secular; archaeological sites; groups of buildings which, as a whole, are of historical or artistic interest; works of art; manuscripts, books, and other objects of historical or archaeological interest; as well as scientific collections and important collections of books or archives or of reproductions of the property'’ defined above;
(b) buildings w hose m ain and effective purpose is to preserve or exhibit the movable cultural property defined in sub-paragraph (a) such as museums, large libraries and depositories of archives... ;
(c) centres containing a large amount of cultural property as defined in subparagraphs (a) and (b), to be known as "centres containing monuments."
In other words, the chief operating principle for the protection of cultural properties is that they are actually properties; that is, they are tangible, built or emergent in nature, physical, and measurable in some way or another. There is a fixation on form and substance, a preoccupation with matter. Not to cast aspersions on the good
142 functionaries of the UN (for their work and influence have accomplished much to be
admired), but this is a significant bias. It is a bias whose curious similarity in English
policies causes problems for residents of Eyam—for as any living community can attest,
there is a great deal more to culture than just the tangible artifact. Unfortunately, it is a
bias that will be reinforced through successive conventions and through the flavor of
artifactually-based preservation projects funded by the UN.^^
Later conventions revisited and attempted to specify exactly what qualities of
cultural properties were at risk, but they did so around undefined and superlative (and
untheorized) terms of aesthetics and universals. UNESCO's 1962 "Recommendations
Concerning the Safeguarding of the Beauty and Character of Landscapes and Sites" is
particularly provocative in some ways and its language is strikingly similar to language
written into policies that govern Eyam village as of the late 1990s. Here are some
passages extracted from the 1962 document (emphasis added):
... at all periods men have sometimes subjected the beauty and character of landscapes and sites forming part of their natural environment to damage which has impoverished the cidtiiral, aesthetic, and even vital heritage of whole regions in all parts of the world. .. .
... this phenomenon affects the aesthetic value of landscapes and sites, natural or man-made, and the cidtural and scientific importance of wild Ufe....
... on account of their beauty and character, the safeguarding of landscapes and sites ... is necessary to the life of men for whom they represent a pozverfid physical, moral and spiritual regenerating influence, while at the same time contributing to the artistic and cultural life of peoples, as innumerable an d universally known examples bear w itness....
125 It would be interesting to conduct thorough research on the formation of this bias on the part of the UN. After all, the UN can only be a reflection of the makeup of its constituents (who include most of the industrialized nations of the world). I would suspect that the UN did not generate this bias and foist it singularly on the world but, rather, that it reflects such predilections that could easily be discemed in earlier policies, scholarships, and worldviews of groups constituting the UN over time.
143 To this day, the UN appears not to have prepared a concise definition of cultural heritage or property although it bases its grand statements on these terms. Admittedly, it is easy to indulge in professional elitism and point out that UN policy makers in the
1950s and '60s failed to recognize intangible dimensions of culture that we in the
U.S.—several decades later—declared to be almost self-evident. That is not my intention here. One need only imagine the extremely competitive zmd high-stakes environment in which the concepts of cultural heritage and property were enacted, however, to appreciate how natural and obvious the preference for the tangible was when developing planning and preservation plans.
Take it from the viewpoint of an applicant for UN preservation funds, for example. It would be relatively easy to frame a proposal for the preservation of, say, fortification ruins and the surrounding area or a historic city district. At risk are a collection of artifacts—architectiual, landscape, and perhaps even documentary—whose existence can be viewed, felt, measured, and verified. Likewise, the deterioration of or degree of progressive risk to those same artifacts can be measured, viewed, felt, and verified according to fundamental and obvious common measures such as erosion, traffic wear and tear, looting, development planning, and so forth. A simple collection of photographs alone can define the artifactual context with great acuity. In the UN's system which favors terminology of the tangible and avoids concrete definitions concerning intangible aspects of culture, proposals to preserve and protect tangible artifacts have the great advantage. A tangible artifact's existence is easy to establish and, once established, its relative merits and needs (the risk assessed) are weighed using common measures against other treastues whose protection is sought by other applicants. That is why it comes as no surprise that until the 1980s there were no world treasures listed on record with the UN that did not concern buildings, archaeological ruins, monuments, or other tangible centers of focus. It appears that there
144 was no conceptual room for the preservation and protection of aspects of culture that were not embodied in objects of some sort. In a rather literal sense, because intangible aspects of culture did not exist in policy terms, they did not exist in real terms within the context of UN funding.
A New High Ground for Contested Realms
Perhaps one of the most stunning breakthroughs in applying preservation policy was when the UN found a strategic gold mine in binding local economic trends, environmentalism's methods, and humanitarian assistance into one cohesive and politically imposing package. The watershed occurred in 1972 with UNESCO's
"Convention for the Protection of the World's Cultural and Natural Heritage."
Summarizing the 1972 convention in a 1998 data sheet, UNESCO says: "By regarding heritage as both cultural and natural, the Convention reminds us of the ways in which people interact with nature, and of the fundamental need to preserve the balance between the two" (UN 1998). Thus the weak realm of the intangible—the ways people hve, communicate, think, and constitute themselves as distinct groups—suddenly became real. Not only that, it suddenly became significant. As UN specialist Max
Jakobson observes, the UN dehberately merged its interests in culture with the very successful methodologies of environmental protection}'^ He remarks that "far-reaching consequences are Ukely to flow from the link between economic development and environmental protection" because "All poHtical parties in the Western world are driven by the green demon" (145), referring to the tremendous poHtical advantage heaped upon poHcies once they could tap the power of the young environmental movement.
126 This feat was successfully accomplished by Archie Green and other folklorists in the U.S. with the creation of the American FoUdife Preservation Act in 1976.
145 Cultural preservation—now linked to the environment—had finally reached
rhetorical high ground. Who could possibly be against the environment? Jakobson was
certainly correct about green power. Environmentalism (especially as it concerns
ecological systems) has been a significant factor in national and international policies
since early in the twentieth century. The world's governments and business interests
have had to negotiate with, compromise with, and sometimes concede to the concerns of
grass-roots environmental groups (Love Canal, Mass Trespass, mudskippers) and
international foundations (Rainforest Alliance, Green Peace). The environment can become an issue that makes or breaks political campaigns at the highest levels,
especially in the more advanced, highly industrialized democracies. It should be no surprise, then, that finding a credible way to link heritage preservation with environmentalism would yield favorable results for preservationists.
Assuming that culture itself is (or cultures themselves are) deemed valuable and may be integral to salvageable precious environments, eventually the general concept of cultural preservation emerged. But what would its terminology be? The 1972
Convention established the World Heritage Committee, the World Heritage Center, and the World Heritage List "for the Protection of the Cultural and Natural Heritage of
Outstanding Universal Value." In this convention,UNESCO provides a very thin definition for cultural heritage (and apparently this is the only place in major UN and even English planning regulations where the term is set forth deliberately): "Cultural heritage ... [is] monuments, groups of buildings and sites with historical, aesthetic, archaeological, scientific, ethnographic, or anthropological value." Heritage, all of a sudden, becomes highly significant on the world stage, and it is immediately a valuable coin in the growing trade of cultural preservation. Unfortunately, the shift brought about by the incorporation of environmental and cultural preservation initiatives had less to do with advances in the principles of how culture could be preserved than with an
146 increase in the rate of success and size of investments in status-quo development activities. Ultimately, heritage and culture have not been seriously scrutinized as concepts in the planning and development business, and they have become tools for advancing one proposal over cinother in increasingly heated competitions for funding.
According to the 1972 Convention, "cultural heritage" is almost exactly the same as what was defined as "cultural property" in the Hague Convention eighteen years eétrHer. UNESCO's official position rem ained that cultural heritage is that w hich is of great importance to the peoples of the world and which is also tangible—aU held up to a new but highly subjective standard of having "outstanding universal value from the view point of history, art or science" (UN 1972). It is very interesting to note that although the language of the 1972 Convention in no way begs a folkloristic definition of heritage
(one that is performance-centered or ethnographically oriented, for example), the
Convention does leave a door wide open for such interpretations on a local level. Note that the terms ethnographic and anthropological were added in the 1972 Convention.
That unmistakably invited—or at least left room for—views of heritage that would be dear to fields Hke anthropology and folklore studies whose ethnographic methods had been gaining influence since the 1950s. It would be hard to say whether or not the UN expressly intended to establish such a flexible interpretive environment, but it has remained durable right into and through the turn of the millennium. Some nations such as the United States and Japan developed preservation poHcies that show a great and resourceful commitment to ethnographic understandings of heritage.The English (as we wül see later in this chapter), however, decHned to take the mile when given the inch
127 Although it is not an everyday term in most American households, the U.S. is perhaps the world leader in incorporating considerations for Uving groups and the intangible elements of cultiure into its broader planning and preservation concerns (see Loomis, 1983). Japan, likewise, has been a leader in the celebration and encouragement of thriving traditions with its "Living Treasures" program that honors and supports master practitioners of endangered arts and skUls (see WiUiams).
147 and pushed their own development policies forward based on relatively conservative
and traditional artifact-centered interpretations of heritage either influenced by or
simply and coincidentally parallel to those of the UN.
If one seeks a sound theoretical basis in UN pohcy for the definitions of terms
such as heritage, culture, outstanding universal value, an d cidtural property, then one can
look long and hard in the conventions and summaries without success. It just wasn't
accomplished at that level. This is understandable since the representative bodies assembled by the UN must surely have found it difficult enough to enact even the most general programs and guidelines concerning culture; complicating the process by introducing messy theoretical considerations was probably impossible.^"® Scattered through yet more UN conventions and publications, we can find further evidence that the UN approaches cultural matters in aesthetic and even sentimental terms: Heritage is
"a gift from the past"^-^; "Heritage is our legacy firom the past, what we hve with today, and what we pass on to future generations. Our cultiual and natural heritage ... are our touchstones, our points of reference, our identity."^®® They establish culture as something that has value and is precious and precarious Hke other components of the human environment; unfortunately, they do Httle or nothing to advance an understanding of its complexity and multipHcity.
Now it should be reiterated that this discussion of the UN's cultural heritage poHcies has not been undertaken for the purpose of sketching an institutional history.
128 See John H. Peterson, 1990. Peterson gives a brief account of theoretical concessions he and other weU-trained specialists had to make in the interest of developing poHcy statements. In short, it came down to either having an acceptably flawed document to guide cultural poHcy or having no document—and possibly no poHcy—at aU.
129 From a 1996 UNESCO fact sheet entitled "Heritage: A Gift firom the Past.
130 Ibid.
148 On the contrary, an understanding of the origins of influential UN policies becomes very
useful when examining similar United Kingdom policies. There are tremendous
similarities between the two domains. From the 1970s to the 1990s, the UN—with
UNESCO, the World Heritage Center, and a robust assistance network—established an
unprecedented set of policy victories that may have helped to shape and validate local
preservation work in England.
Once culture and heritage had been established as components of the world's
environment, the UN found that it could advance its humanitarian, preservation, and
economic missions all at the same time by using financial assistance as a tool for
influencing preservation and development activities around the world (and $25 billion
annually is a handy tool). Illustrated in the case of Eyam and the planning authorities
that govern it, there is a powerful system by which the most suitable vehicle for preserving cultural environments at risk was their economic development. A 1996 UN report on heritage preservation asserts that "Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable—to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" and that
"Technology and social organization can be both managed and improved to make way for a new era of economic growth." The UN's formal policy hnk between economics
(including planning) and the environment has proven to be a precedent with major implications for cultiual heritage preservation in the UK. In the next sections, we wül see that the protection of cultural heritage in the UK is the goal of several powerful organizations and that planning and economic development are among their chief m ethods.
149 Trickle-Down and Ripples: Planning and Preservation in the UK
If an honest poll could be taken among all the member governments of the UN as to their order of priorities, there can hardly be any doubt that a clear majority would put economic development at the top of the agenda. Jakobson 135-136)
Undoubtedly, the policies adopted and promoted by the UN in the second half
of this century were influenced by English preservation ideologies, methodologies, and
commitments, just as they were certainly shaped by those of other culturally and
politically influential entities Uke Germany, France, and the U-S. After aU, these and
other nations existed and were self-conscious of their own rugged transformations long
before the UN was formed. But by the time the UN's cultural preservation policies were
centralized, ratified, disseminated, and became international precedent in the 1970s,
these same policy techniques appear to have been returned to the UK and other
countries with a new lustre. England has been an active participant in UNESCO and
major global conferences for preservation and the environment, including the influential
1992 Rio World Environment Convention. This long-standing participation has strongly
influenced the nature and mission of preservation policy in England. What had once been an English fascination for antiquities in the early part of the century was by the
1970s an established and formalized tool useful to countless political, business,
community, and educational interests throughout the country.
Ultimately, it is up to each nation to seize the UN's example and do what it wül under its own laws and authority. One can readüy see the influence of the UN's world preservation system in the institutions and policies of many countries. The United
States (cultural conservation), Germany (political and social Reunification management),
Japan (Living Treasures), and the United Kingdom (distributed planning authorities) are among the leaders in financial commitment and devotion to preservation, each having its
150 own system of grantors, shelters, planning policy makers, and grant recipients who péirticipate in significant heritage preservation initiatives.
The UN policies and UNESCO charters did not become UK policies, but they did have significant influence (Simons; Yoder). Jakobsen observed that the UN's world economic planning effort countries became a system in which control over development policy passed back to the developed countries (138-139). This is a model that the
English have thoroughly embraced. The basic constitution of the planning system in the
United Kingdom today is every bit as expansive as the UN's (except in raw financial terms), except it operates on a national scale instead of internationally. It is highly standardized and broadly distributed, in the great proprietary and organizational management tradition of William the Conqueror himself. Cultural preservation in the
UK, like that of the UN, is controlled locally and validated centrally. Also like the UN, the UK (nationally and locally) is committed to highly restrictive, object-oriented interpretations of cultural heritage.
MAJOR UNITED KINGDOM PLANNING AUTHORITIES
In the UK, there is a core group of government and private organizations whose missions and activities mingle in the greater goals of planning and development in general with ramifications for heritage preservation in particular. Naturally, the heritage preservation system in the UK is too complex to diagreun comprehensively. There are many influences—public, private, royal, corporate, individual, culhual, philanthropic, and so on—on what is preserved for what purposes and under what terms. They tend to operate around a central axis of powerful organizations and institutions that control or contribute significant funding and visible leadership. As the example of satellite dish regulations at the beginning of this chapter illustrates, almost every property in England falls under the stewardship of at least one planning arbiter or another. Eyam, in that
151 sense, is just another English place, looking upward and outward for permission and guidance when it comes to discreet matters relating to everyday properties.
Unfortunately for Eyam, whereas much of England must conform to the guidelines of the
Department of the Environment, Transport, and the Regions, Eyam must conform to those and also the guidelines of at least three other enormous governing bodies. It is a complex situation, outlined in Figure 4:
152 International International Committee of International Institute of intellectual Bureau of Intellectual Cooperation Education Cooperation 1925-1968 1922-1946 1925-1946
United Nations 1945
ICOMOS International International Council of Monuments and Sites 1964
UNESCO World World Heritage Heritage Center Convention UNESCO 1972 1972
Department of the Environment, Transport, and the Regions (Public)
National
English Heritage National Trust (Public) (Private)
East Midlands Regional Planning Authority
Derbyshire Local Peak District Dales Eyam Mechanics (Eyam ) National Park Development (Public) Council Institute (Volunteer) (Public)
Fig. 4. Selected organizations that directly or indirectly shape development and planning policies that have an impact on Eyam.
153 The Department of the Environment, Transport, and the Regions—Rights,
Responsibilities, and Restrictions
Ministering over the national planning scene in the UK is the Department of the
Environment, Transport, and the Regions (the DETR). As its name suggests, the DETR oversees many matters concerning the environment (like mixing the American
Departments of the Interior and the Environment), highways and infrastructure, national parks, and the resolution of conflicts when obstacles arise before development initiatives. To understand a major source of tension in Eyam and a factor that has figured in DETR policies for at least 70 years, one needs to appreciate British fervor and commitment to what many feel is their inalienable "right to roam" the English countryside. Even Robin Hood and his Merry Band had to deal with accusations that they had trespassed in the King's Wood and hunted the King's Deer. Early in the twentieth century, however, a major public happening concerning access to held lands is today believed to be the spark that kindled the development of the National Parks
System and controversial access laws throughout the country.
In 1932, a major English domestic crisis signalled the convergence of cultural and environmental concerns (such as those later realized much more formally recognized by the United Nations). Like most Western, industrialized nations during that decade, the
United Kingdom was suffering through a terrible economic depression. The Midlands areas of Yorkshire and Derbyshire (where Eyam is) suffered as much as any region of the country because the work of so many of their farmers and manual laborers was wiped out. The poor had little money to feed and clothe themselves, and of course there was nothing left for any sort of entertainment or diversion from their troubles. So they turned to what was available to them in abundance without cost: the outdoors. Unfortunately, the poet Dibdin's "right little, tight little island" offered almost no land that was not already owned by some private or other interest. W hat may have looked like a
154 tantalizing and inviting wilderness of high moors, river valleys, and forests was really a massive patchwork of land owned by elite others with more money and more power than most common individuals. In several particularly angry encounters, pleasure seekers and gun-toting landowners stared each other down in conflicts pitting one's
(perceived) inherent right to roam the outdoors against landowners' right to manage their properties as they saw fit. Ultimately, the matter was settled by the force of the masses. Known as the "Mass Trespass," a highly publicized act of civil disobedience was organized in order to assert what participants believed was the English citizen's
"right to roam" the open and natural spaces of the country (Smith 95).
By the hundreds, walkers gathered in defiance and crossed the moors and dziles in broad daylight, daring landowners and public authorities to intervene and escalate the matter. Not only was preservation of the environment (in the landowners' interests) an issue, but so was access to it (in the public's interest). What good was it to the English people to have areas of beauty if they could not enjoy it? Roland Smith, writing on the staff of the Peak District National Park, describes the context in which the Mass
Trespass occurred:
Ramblers in those bad old days were prepared to go to any lengths, including spells of imprisonment, to defend what they claimed as their "right to roam." The access movement arose in the grim, industrial cities of the South Pennines in the depths of the Depression. With no jobs and therefore no money in their pockets, young people looked beyond the dingy, back-to-back terraces which were their homes to the misty moorlands on the horizon for their recreation. Acres of empty heather moorland on hills like Kinder and Bleaklow offered them the sense of freedom they needed, a breathing space in contrast to the confinement of their environments. But the hills, in those days, were out of bounds.
So-called "wooden-Uars"—notices proclaiming "Trespassers wfll be Prosecuted"—dotted the moors, and photographs of offenders were even advertised, with rewards for information resulting in their apprehension, in local newspapers. The moors were managed with iron hands by gameskeepers who counted their red grouse somewhat higher in value than mere "ramblers from Manchester way."
155 There were many skirmishes before the whole thing came to a head w ith the famous mass trespass on Kinder on April 24th, 1932. About 600 ramblers set off from Hayfield determined to press the landowners into a confrontation. And a confrontation there was, on the moorland slopes just below the escarpment near the Kinder Reservoir. In the "battle" that followed, several assaults took place, resulting in jail sentences.... But their point had been made, and restrictions were gradually eased in until in 1951, when the Peak National Park came into being, one of the first jobs it did was to negotiate special access agreements for these areas. (95)
Sixty-six years later, in a 1998 speech at a Yorkshire Ramblers' Association rally.
Environment Minister Michael Meacher expressed the DETR's continuing interests in and
commitments to public access. Since on this day Meacher spoke before a gathering of
people who favored the "right to roam," the matter of his brief address favored how the
Department accommodates the touring public. The speech articulated how the DETR
interprets and negotiates ramblers' and tenants' rights, two related species that often
seem to contradict one another. By reviewing press clippings and speech outlines, one
can easily recognize one of the thornier and enduring challenges confronting the DETR: how to assure residents and landowners that the government is not providing the world with unfettered access to properties across the nation. Before he addressed the points
that would be of greatest interest to the ramblers, Meacher strategically dispelled "a few myths" that forever shadow his department's policies. He said, "If we decide to introduce statutory right of access^^^, this w ill not mean: allowing people to wander
through fields of crops, farmyards, or back gardens!; automatically greater access for dogs; permitting activities other than quiet open-air recreation" (Meacher 1998). Good rhetorical strategy demands that the orator introduce and dismiss the strongest credible counter-argument at the beginning. Meacher knew that for every rambler in attendance
131 On. the slate for that year was a law providing visitors with statutory access to designated lands in the fOngdom, essentially nationalizing the right of access.
156 who would be pleased by the speech there would be many landowners or occupiers waiting to attack the ideas on the grounds that their own rights and interests would be encroached upon.
Meacher (1998) provides a concise reiteration of DETR land access policies and its mission, reflected across its many reports, web sites, and brochures. As of the end of the 1990s, the functions of the DETR fell into two main categories: (1) the rights and interests of visitors and (2) the rights and interests of owners. Meacher articulates them as generally as possible:
DETR access policies zvill:
• Give people more opportunities to explore some of this country's finest
and often wilder countryside;
• Balance benefits and costs of greater access—not only in financial terms
but also in terms of environmental and social considerations... ;
• Strike a proper balance between the "3 Rs— rights, responsibilities, and
restrictions. Expect those benefitting from greater access to behave
responsibly, to respect the countryside and those whose livelihoods may
depend on it... ;
stipulating that
• Owners and occupiers of access land should, in general, remain free to
develop and use it, subject to normal constraints; and that they should be
able to suspend access for short periods;
• Liability of owners and occupiers toward those exercising a right of
access to their land should be no more than that toward trespassers;
• Relevant statutory agencies should have powers to limit access on
grounds of health and safety, nature conservation, or heritage.
157 The DETR helps to establish—with ratification by Parliament or by Parliamentary decree—national preservation and planning laws. The DETR's Planning Inspectorate handles the majority of inquiries, appeals, negotiations, and disputes arising from national plans, devoting a significant portion of its resources to preventive planning by way of generating impact reports, also known as project briefs. Unlike the American model of cultural conservation^^", however, DETR impact reports undertake to assess potential damage to tangible aspects of culture only, ignoring the intangible just as prescribed "by the book" in UN charters. Thus the whole of England and Wales is subject to standardized guidelines (such as satellite dish placement) concerning the preservation of the environment, and Eyam is included of course.
The National Trust
The National Trust was founded in 1895 by Octavia Hill, Robert Hunter, and
Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley who were all interested in acquiring and preserving areas of natural beauty and buildings from "uncontrolled development and industrialization"
(National Trust 1999). The Trust is a private organization that firequently works in cooperation with various English public offices, including the DETR and English
Heritage. Today, the Trust has nearly 3 million subscribing members and now cares for more than 612,000 acres of countryside in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Also under its protection, the National Trust controls 600 miles of coastline and several hundred buildings and estates "of outstanding interest and importance."
132 In the U.S., law stipulates that culture is to be recognized as part of the natural environment, potentiaUy threatened by planning and development initiatives. Consequently, any federally funded project that may threaten a cultural group's way of life m ust commission an impact study and abide by the results of the report. The U.S. has been relatively successfid in protecting some cultural groups against developments that would badly harm their traditional ways of life. See Ormond Loomis, 1983, for a complete outline of issues, principles, and law concerning cultural conservation in the U.S.
158 The Trust maintains its sites in perpetuity, and most of them are open to the public in accordance with the Trust's strong commitment to public access. Most of the properties (including buildings) under its stewardship are either owned or managed by the Trust. It even has a unique extra protection granted by Parliament to declare any of its properties "inalienable,"meaning that even national crises Ccumot merit removing properties from the control of the Trust.
English Heritage—"Particular Views"
English Heritage was created by the UK National Heritage Act in 1983 for the purposes of "securing the preservation of Usted^^^ buildings emd cincient monuments, promoting the preservation and enhancement of the character and appearance of conservation areas, and promoting the public's enjoyment and knowledge of the historic built environment" (1994). Performing special preservation functions and ultimately making recommendations to the government and other authorities, English Heritage maintains regional teams of a "Conservation Group" consisting of "adrninistrators, architects, architectural historians, historic areas advisers, planners, and archaeologists." Together under this mandate, English Heritage and its Conservation
Group's principal concern is "the preservation of historic buildings and their contents and settings, and ensuring that the archaeological value of the buildings and their sites are given their full weight."
English Heritage also designates what it calls "Conservation Areas," zones accorded special protection by the organization, the DETR, and the many other boards, committees, and interests influenced by DETR and English Heritage policies.
133 The Secretary of State for National Heritage manages a list of buildings of special architectural and historic interest, advised by English Heritage. Approximately 15,000 churches and chapels are listed (English Heritage 1994).
159 Conservation Areas range from "the centres of our historic towns and cities, through
fishing and rnining villages, 18th- and 19th-century suburbs, model housing estates, and
country houses set in their historic parks, to historic transport's links and their environs,
such as stretches of canal" (English Heritage 1999). The first conservation areas were
created in 1967 and today there are more than 8,000 in England. Eyam Village Hes
w ithin a C onservation Area.
Within a Conservation Area the local authority^^ has extra controls over
demolition, minor developments, and the protection of trees wherein "there is a
presumption in favour of retaining buildings which make a positive contribution to the
character or appearance of the Conservation Area" (1999). These proscriptions effect
ordinary residents of lone and community dwellings and places of business, for they
mitigate against changes and decisions that could be considered personal or trivial. For
example, the prohibition against unauthorized minor developments means that people
living in Conservation Areas must receive permission (and may not get it) before
changing the siding on a building, inserting dormer windows, or putting up a satellite
dish (as duly warned against in A Householder's Planning Guide for the Installation of
Satellite Television Dishes). The local authority can even go so far as to forbid adding a porch to a house, changing the color of trim, windows, or doors. If one in a
Conservation Area wishes to clear some space in the garden for flowers or vegetables and must cut down, "lop, or top" a tree—however small—he or she must first apply to
the local authority and hope not to receive a "tree preservation order" that would forbid the action.
Conservation Area designation begins on the local level where an interested party or group petitions English Heritage to "protect and enhance" an area for conservation.
134 In. Eyam's case there is no single local authority.
160 According to English Heritage, the "special character" meriting protection comes not
only from the quality of the buildings themselves but also from
the historic layout of roads, paths and boundaries; characteristic buildings and paving materials; a particular "mix" of building uses; public and private spaces, such as gardens, parks and greens; and trees and street furniture, which contribute to particular znezus—all these and more make up the familiar local scene. Conservation areas give broader protection than Listing individual buildings: all the features, listed or otherwise, within the area, are recognised as part of its character. (1994, emphasis added)
Here, again, we see a preponderance of devotion to structures and tangible
aspects of their uses and pasts, articulated clearly in the mission statement above as well as in the description of what merits qualification as a Conservation Area. Although
English Heritage has an expressed interest in the built environment, the organization's policies permit room for concessions based on the need to let cultured groups continue to use the structures on their own terms. English Heritage's polices for handling churches embodies this principle:
We use [our] powers and functions to help preserve historic churches, which contribute so significantly to the nation's heritage. We also fully acknowledge the importance of keeping churches in use and the need to take into account a congregation's own assessment of current needs. A mutually satisfactory solution can usually be found if both sides understand each other's interests.^35 (1994)
This is a relatively uncommon expression that community needs in and around historical environments are themselves valuable; indeed, it is at least an incidental recognition that community needs and uses of these sites toda}/ comprise the artifacts' value and interest.
But in the overall English policy matrix, this is a fleeting and rare insight.
135 But as the Peak Park says, preference is given to conservation (of the form) in case of conflict of interests.
161 English Heritage provides grant funding for special projects with a preference for those involving Church of England structures. Of the 15,000 listed churches and chapels in England, 13,000 belong to the Church of England, so this is no small influence. In this way, English Heritage's reach extends into almost every town and parish in the country.
Not surprisingly, English Heritage grant funding may be used only in projects that conform to strict Limitations on the visual impact and historical integrity of the changes to be made (Shaw; Lewis; English Heritage) so long as the alterations and improvements do not harm the structures' "special character" (English Heritage 1999). Eyam's St.
Lawrence Parish Church (Church of England) was undergoing extensive structural repair with English Heritage funding while I conducted the majority of my fieldwork in the village. Funding provided for work to reinforce structural elements of St. Lawrrence
Parish Church's tower and nave ia order to replace its badly leaking roof. Reverend
Shaw and his parish had to give great assurances to English Heritage that the character of the church structure and its outward appearance would not change [Zfs character shall not be destroyed]. Even though perfectly satisfactory repairs could have been made more quickly and at lower cost, the demands asserted by English Heritage policy (though not incongruous with the wishes of Reverend Shaw and his parishioners) required that the church secure significant additional funds from other sources in order to replace roofing elements with traditional (and much more expensive) materials rendered under expert workmanship. As one who seeks the support of English Heritage quickly discovers, the organization's power and influence can go significantly beyond the direct impact of its own "listing" recommendations and grant funding initiatives. English Heritage energizes the larger English planning and preservation system very effectively in a specific way informed by its owm definitions of what constitutes English heritage.
162 The Peak District National Park—"Not Ours, But Ours to Look After"^^^
Created in 1951^^^, the Peak District National Park (or just the Peak Park) was
the UK's first national park, coining an incredible 79 years after the U.S. created its
national parks system with the acquisition of Yosemite.^^^ Because the very young
English national parks system has never had any lands of its own to set aside, its
existence depended on asserting and expanding the right to roam that the Mass
Trespassers had established twenty years earlier. Success in this endeavor meant
developing the national parks as a resource available free to the public and yet also as a facility managed in a way that would protect the interests of the property holders.
According to Peak Park management, this is the park's general physical description:
The Peak National Park consists of 555 square miles ... of uplands at the south end of the Pennines, surrounded by more fertile lowlands and dense urban development. Its attractive landscape is the product of nature and is managed by people. Nature provided limestone plateaux and gritstone moors and edges, shale valleys and limestone gorges. Over 100,000 years of hum an occupation has produced stone walled fields, meadows and rough grazing, forestry and woodlands, farmsteads, villages large and small and country houses. The current settlement pattern and human activity consists of about 3,000 farms and 100 villages. There is a resident population of over 38,000 people; around 18,000 residents in work and about 15,000 jobs in the Park in service industries (including tourism), manufacturing, quarrying and farming. The Park has around 22 m illion visits each year. {Structure Plan 7)
136 This quotation is cited in the Foreword to the Peak National Park Structure Plan of 1994.
137 The English national park system was created in response to the 1947 Hobhouse Report and the 1949 National Parks Act which established legal justification for the system and the Peak Park in particular.
138 Important and advantageous set-asides in North America had begun even before the 1872 designation of the first national park. US territories and districts had begun setting lands aside as early as 1790 with the authorization of the District of Columbia and its National Capitol Parks. Others that followed included the Hot Springs Reservation in Arkansas in 1932 and Yosemite as a California state park in 1864. (NPS 1999a)
163 The first impression this seems to give is that the Peak Park Planning Authority interprets its domain in environmental (especially geological), archaeological, and geographic (or at least demographic) terms. Geology, archaeology, and geography are what 1, at least for the moment, call large sciences that tend to deal with the human and natural environments either from a distance (working in macrocosmic proportions) or in quantitative, statistical terms. There are exceptions to this of course, but even archaeology frequently examines its local finds in terms of trends, averages, and generalizations in order to arrive at conclusions that are valid under the scientific method. Instead of dealing with folk groups or cultures ethnographically, the chosen methodologies dictate dealing with settlement patterns and resident populations scientifically; instead of recognizing expressions, traditions, and worldviews, they recognize structures, artifacts, land-use patterns, and population centers. While I admit no essential bias against these large sciences and the quality of their work in the context of Peak Park development controls, I do assert that their use to the exclusion of humanities fields that deal with cultures and their expressions in more intimate terms is ultimately damaging to the park's community groups (more on this in chapter five).
164 Manchester o • Sheffield Peak District
London
Figure 5. The Peak District National Park is situated in the English North Midlands, covering approximately 555 square miles.
165 A«27(M)
OLDHAM
MANCH Tbrsid*
GLOSSOP 'TJ
^Hayfi«ld
BUXT
Hardfwton
A524
O Site Survey 1994 ■ Roadside Survey Site 1994 —— Road ------Railway I I Peak National Park
Figure 6. Eyam (between Castleton and Bakewell near the center of the Park) is located one mile away from the nearest substantial transportation route.
166 Like the United Nations, like English Heritage, and like other planning and
preservation organizations in the structures above it, the Peak Park has a definite and
entrenched bias in development policy toward the visucd and the tangible, what Henry
Glassie first referred to as "tenacious" artifacts in terms of American folk architecture back in the 1960s. Although the Park reserves the right to define valued characteristics
on a case by case basis for each locality in its jurisdiction, it clearly operates on the
general view that natural and landscape (including architectural and archaeological)
resources embody the Park's chief values and that maintaining public access to them is
the primary mission. Through the momentum of prevailing policies and precedents.
Peak Park planning interests focus primarily on the built and natural environments.
There is no provision that explicitly protects the needs of living communities on a singular scale without balancing them against the interests of the larger consuming public. Thus a village such as Eyam finds itself in something of a sticky position.
While there are many factors in the economic system that bears on Eyam today—including the DETR, English Heritage, and the Derbyshire Dales
Commission—the Peak District National Park metes out the most specific and demanding framework for living in the protected environment. The Peak Park (like the nine other national parks) is fundamentally a planning agency^^^, given over to managing development control in an area accorded England's "highest status of protection as far as landscape and scenic beauty are concerned" {Structure Plan 23). The Peak Park's policies respond to local circumstances within a context of national and international planning directions and precedents. As the chart in Figure 4 illustrates, the Peak Park is like a local basin for collecting policy trends that flow down from higher regional, national, and international areas. As a local empowerment of national policies, the
139 Structure Plan, 3.4.
167 Park's planning authority is inherently vested with the powers of the organizations presiding over it at other levels. This relationship is purposeful, and the Pecik Park's mandate is to ensure that its local plan will "prevail for the purpose of all planning decisions" should there arise a conflict between local and national plans (16). The
National Parks System zmd Peak Park also call their control "already more stringent in the parks than in the countryside generally" (23) in the service of their responsibility to protect the natural scenic environment. Incredibly—considering the towering control structure within which it operates—the Peak Park employs a far more demanding set of restrictions than found just about anj'where else in the country. And Eyam village is just one of many htmdreds of communities living within its cordon sanitaire.
The Peak Park's written policy is called the Structure Plan, most recently revised and adopted in 1994 (the complementary Local Structure Plan w as released in 1997).^'^°
The Structure Plan explains that it "takes account of national and regional planning guidance and the planning policies of neighboring authorities ... sets the strategic framework for land use planning documents, decisions, and actions ... [and] examines the physical, social and economic systems of the Peak National Park" (6). The standard—the necessary common measure—against which England's Peak Park planning assessments are judged are the "valued characteristics of the Peak National
Park" {Structure Plan 14). The Park defines its "most valued characteristics" in this w ay:
1.28 The valued characteristics of the National Park include quiet enjoyment; wildness and remoteness; landscape, wildlife and plants; geology and geomorphology; clean earth, air and water; the cultural heritage of history, archaeology, buildings, customs and literary associations; and any other features which make up its special quality.. .. Protection of the abüity to enjoy these
140 I vvül refer to theStructure Plan as either the Structure Plan or just the Plan-, the Local Plan is always referred to as the Local Plan.
1 6 8 valued characteristics underlies the purposes of National Parks and the policies of this Local Plan. {Local Plan 19)
It is not surprising that the terminology is weighted toward the natural and the physical.
After aU, Peak Park policies are influenced by those of the regions surrounding it which are, in turn, shaped by national policies which have themselves been guided by international policies—aU of which favor the same interpretation of environment. In the definition above, at least one third of the implication is on the natural environment of flora and fauna, geological features, and the degree to which the area represents a wild, untamed opposition to the very cultivated rest of England. A second third—the clause referring to culture—seems to make a break from the status quo and includes customs
(at their heart, very intangible, ephemeral) along with the notions of history and literary associations. This could very well be interpreted to include non-physical aspects of culture such as beliefs, oral traditions, and other behavioral, material, and verbal forms of folk culture. But a thorough analysis of the Structure Plan and Local Plan reveals no specific, serious, and enforceable codes that clearly define and account for customs amd traditions sustained by local groups. In contrast to this, almost the entire body of each plan is devoted to specifying enforceable codes for protecting the natural and built environments as well as the rights of tourists who come to enjoy them.
Finally, the Peak Park has added a wild card category to round off its definition of valued characteristics: any other features which make up its special quality. W hat is this special quality? It sounds an awful lot like a loophole. It also seems to indicate either
(on the benign side) that the policy authors wished to keep the term open for evaluation and réévaluation on a case by case basis or (on the more troubling side) that the authors left the policy unfettered in order to provide it the greatest latitude possible in dictating the terms in future developments. I am not pointing a finger to argue that it is either way, for I cannot defend either conclusion; I do know, however, that the plans do not
169 provide published criteria specifying what "special quality" means, either locally within
certain areas or across the entire park as a whole. Considering the specificity with
which the plan controls many other features of park management such as parking,
housing, industry, spending and demographic trends, and more, failing to lock down a
crucial term upon which every policy decision could ultimately be made seems
extraordinarily risky.
The Structure Plan organizes its policy areas into seven categories: conservation,
housing, shops and community services, economy, recreation and tourism, minerals and
waste disposal, and transport. Directly or indirectly, all of these policy areas have an
influence on individuals in Eyam and the community itself. For now, I wiU. focus on
policies relating to conservation, housing, shops and community services, recreation and
tourism, and transport.
Conservation
The Planning Board sets forth that its objectives for conservation in the park are:
To conserve and enhance the natural qualities (for example landscape, wildlife, and geological features) and particularly to safeguard those areas which have the wildest character.
and
To conserve and enhance the traditional, historic and cultural qualities which make up its distinctive character (for example historic buildings, the character of the villages, archaeological sites and landscape features such as dry-stone wall field boundaries). (3.3)
As a planning (and conservation/preservation) agency, the Park operates under the national guideline that "All policies now have to be assessed for environmental impact and the local Agenda 21 [. . . that specifies] that development m ust be 'Sustainable' i.e. not to destroy irreplaceable environmental assets" (3.6). Referring to the National Parks
170 and Access Act of 1949 (which is sort of like a constitution for the national parks
system), the Board reiterates its "two statutory purposes": "to conserve and enhance
the natural beauty of the area" and "to provide for the enjoyment of the area by the
public" (3.7). In these and other paragraphs in the conservation section of the Plan, the
language conspicuously favors not only the physical and tangible portions of the
environment under protection but especially the natural embodiments thereof. Foregoing
more examples, an important conclusion to note is that at this level of the Plan (where
specifics are really hammered out) culture and intangible expressions of culture have
dropped entirely out of the discourse of conservation. Like the original inspirations for
the William Morris Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and the English
National Trust in the 1800s and UNESCO sixty years ago, protection (or now
conservation) of the environment is chiefly the protection of exceptional featrues of the natural and built envirorunents.
To avoid doing a wrong in making the Planning Board appear heartless and
insensitive to the needs of local populations, it is important to note that the Plan states
the Board's awareness of national policies that require constituent planning groups (like
the Park) to encourage "Development of a healthy rural economy ... both for social and economic reasons and as a means by which the countryside can be protected" (3.18).
The health of community life is not entirely outside the interest of the Plan, b u t it is also fair to point out that community ("social") well-being is characterized in economic terms and is considered important (at least in part) in service of the Park's other conservation goals. One final passage that typifies the overall import of this section's stance toward culture reads as follows in a paragraph entitled "Development in the Towns, Villages and Conservation Areas of the Park": "The conservation and enhancement of a high quality environment is important generally, but particularly in those towns and villages which have a special quality.... Special attention should be paid to buildings which are
171 'listed'... as being 'of special architectural or historic interest, the character of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance" (3.18.C,emphasis added). Owing to its historic parish church, fabled Celtic cross, and the plague story, Eyam is one of those towns with a special quality and so the planning and development stakes are set yet another notch higher there.
Housing
Said simply, there is a terrific and increasing demand for housing in the area of the Park. Local populations are growing and "commuter developm ent"pressures for additional dwellings in the Park's villages make housing a major issue in the conservation and protection of the Park's valued characteristics (4.4). Indeed, housing is one of the greatest fundamental problems for the Park. A 1989Gallup Poll commissioned by the Board determined that more than 70% of all British citizens would prefer to live in rural areas (like the Peak Park) and the Park rightfully concludes that
"the demand ... is insatiable" (4.9). Thus provisions for a limited number of additional dwelling constructions and related land appropriations are considered trivial and futile and have simply not been made. The Park hopes to maintain the current population of
38,000indefinitely. And so policy focuses on methods for deterrnining who has priorit^^ considerations for purchasing or leasing housing in the Park.
Because the "externally generated demand for housing in the Park is virtually insatiable," the Park assumes no obligation to approve housing development that is
141 "Commuter development" is the Sanford Report's shorthand for what would be called suburban growth or the creation of "bedroom communities" in the U.S. The Peak Park is situated between the major urban centers of Sheffield, Chesterfield, and Manchester. As major regional economies grow, so do populations and inter-region commerce. Naturally, the wide-open areas and picturesque small communities of the park are very appealing to wealthier people who work in the cities but can afford village housing and transport for daily commutes (Struchire Plan 40).
172 "unrelated to local social or economic needs" (4.21). The Park will do whatever is in its
power to prevent commuter development and holiday home pressures from impinging on
the environment. The trouble is that as housing pressures increase, housing prices
increase, very quickly escalating costs far out of the reach of local residents who wish to
relocate in the same communities as their families grow. According to the Plan, the Park
will seek to provide for housing additions that meet local needs, making "special
arrangements" to accommodate them (4.23-4.24). Unfortunately, in order to do so the
Park will have to define w hat constitutes local in this context first. The Peak Park takes
its definition from the National Park Authority's Interim Housing Policy of 1989:
To be considered as local, a person should have a long and well-established connection with the area. This generally means that a person will have lived ... [in the area] where planning permission is sought... for a period of at least 10 years. (Local Plan 4.26)
A period of residency of less than 10 years is considered to be too transitory. However, this period of residency need not have been continuous. For instance, a person may have spent a number of years away at college. The total aggregate period of residency is taken into account, taken over a period of 20 years. (4.27)
The National Park Authority considers that where an application for a private dwelling is approved, the person proving the local need should be the first occupant of the dwelling. This requirement is included as a condition of the perm ission. (4.29)
This policy is designed to apply in perpetuity. Curiously, Park policy has shifted here from controlling the preservation of tangible artifacts and natural features to controlling who lives in the park and who constihites the communities themselves. This is a ponderous strain to place on the "special qualities" rule that informs basic policy.
Shops, Services, and Community Facilities
This section of the Plan is fairly brief, dealing primarily with one general concern:
Do retail developments serve local needs? In order to determine what local means in
173 this context (and it is fundamentally different from the local criterion employed in the
Housing section), the Plan has designated 64 areas known as Local Plan Settlements.
These are recognized settlements of sufficient size to merit consideration as actual
communities. Eyam is among them. In order to ensure that retail developments serve
the communities—and do not cater strictly to tourists—the Plan provides restrictions on
the nature of goods and services to be sold as well as the uses to which structures can be put (minimizing traffic, light and noise pollution, etc.). The Park's goal is to ensure that
"Settlements should not... be allowed to become over-saturated and visually cluttered with shops serving visitors' needs only" {Local Plan 5.1-5.8). To permit the economic balance to shift too far in the wrong direction would be to encourage the very same
"commuter development" that the Housing section of the Plan is designed to halt.
Recreation and Tourism
Recreation and tourism development is acceptable provided that "it relates to quiet enjoyment and activities dependent upon the use of the natural and physical characteristics of the area" {Structure Plan 70). The Board's objective in expressing its recreation and tourism policy is:
To provide for visitors and local people seeking quiet enjoyment of the valued characteristics of the Park; to achieve a more even spread of visits over the year; to increase the number of visitors who stay one night or more; and to maximise local social and economic benefits subject to the conservation priority. {Plan 7.3)
One wül quickly note deference to the Park's valued characteristics and their "quiet enjoyment." Quietude, the sensation of isolation, a reflexive appreciation of serene natural settings, and even a pastoral communion with harmonious rural zones embodying the marriage of built landscapes and organic forms are all laid out as the preferable—indeed, compulsory—experiences to be had by visitors. In the Plan's
174 definition of valued characteristics (above), "quiet enjoyment" is positioned more like a method than a singular characteristic of its own. Prohibited activities follow suit: "off- read 4-wheel drive, motor cycle scrambling, war games, power boating, clay pigeon shooting, and^ass spectator events" are off-limits "because they cause noise, disturbance, visual intrusion or erosion and restrict public access and enjoyment" (Local
Plan 7.5). Strictly speaking, one could credibly argue that mass spectator events and the rest constitute forms of access and enjoyment too, but they do not conform to the "quiet enjoyment" principle and are thus disallowed.
The Park faces a difficult challenge in its tourism policy. The Plan states:
"All the National Park's constituent authorities wish to increase tourism, and are
'selling' the Peak District as an asset" (1.12.vi). On one hand, it proudly boasts 22.5 million annual visitors that make it the most-visited park in the world. With them they bring their money—an estimated £75 million per year^"^^—and pum p it into the area's economy. On the other hand, the visitors also have a considerable impact on the environment, in terms of wear and tear and also by their sheer presence on the moors, in the valleys, on footpaths, and in village streets. They inevitably endanger landscape, structures, transportation, and normal community activities. The Plan attempts to take these positives and negatives into account and balance them to meet the Park's conservation and access priorities. Unfortunately, the policy once again effectively favors the interests of the visiting public and the conservation needs of the built and natural environments.
While each village or locality experiences some measure of the Park's huge tourist burden and the pressures that come with it (parking and traffic needs, wear and tear on public utilities and resources, law enforcement, etc.) there is no guarantee that each
142 This figure was reported in the 1986/87 Peak Park Visitor Survey.
175 village or other locality wül receive a share of the tourist revenue based on its tourist burden. Eyam suffers a striking gap between its tourist burden and tourist income.
Transport
The Local Plan points out that "The National Park Authority is a planning authority, but not a highway authority" (11.4). This means that while transportation issues are a matter of the Park's concern, they are not within its control. The Park can make recommendations to local and national transport authorities and may also grant and deny development projects according to its own conservation and access priorities.
What it cannot do is create or improve transportation infrastructures and dictate highway policies, changes that communities such as Eyam need in a bad way.
Ultimately, the Park's strategy is designed to "manage the demands for transport in and across the National Park; to alleviate problems caused by traffic and car parking; to support the provision of public transport to and within the National Park .. . and to improve conditions for non-motorised transport" (11.1). But the Park also states its priority very clearly: "In the National Park, environmental quality will be the primary criterion in the planning of the transport system" {Plan 91) and "it is clear that where
[conflicting] interests appear . .. the National Park Authority must favour conservation"
(134). Again, protection of the natural and built environments and access are given highest credence, presumably over resident community demands should there be direct conflict.
The Park has a very real traffic problem. In a survey of parish councils, traffic and parking concerns were raised more than any other issue {Plan 90). Consider an average-sized American national park such as Yellowstone. In recent years,
Yellowstone—with almost 3,500 square miles of area—reached what its administrators believed to be saturation levels of visitor traffic with a little over four million annual
176 visitors.^^^ The Peak Park is not very large in comparison with other great national parks of the world. At only 555 square miles, it is just one seventh the size of
Yellowstone. Yet the Peak was recognized as the most-visited national park in the world
in 1996 with an estimated 22 miUion visitors that year.^'^ The Peak Park has a relative burden of visitors (in terms of area) 35 times greater than beleaguered Yellowstone, and yet it actively encourages more. What the Peak Park's visitors come to see is a mixture of wild environment consisting mainly of high moors and river valleys and the built environment, or the local cultural heritage of towns and villages. The Park's 22 million visitors are not off hiking remote trails and camping out of sight for days at a time; they are parking in front of people's houses and crowding the streets and shops of every community in the Peak.
Major transportation policies that have a bearing on Ufe in Eyam include public transportation, traffic management, and parking accommodations. Many of Eyam's villagers depend on public transportation to get them to employment and resources in larger urban centers such as Sheffield, Chesterfield, and Manchester, all of which are within 11-20 miles of the village. Recall how Eyam is laid out (chapter three) and that passage through the village is restricted to one road only: Church Street. There is no alternate route that does not require departures over moors and through rills far out of the way. The Upper Midlands intercity bus line stops in Eyam several times each day, but the service is at risk. Tourists and their cars constantly clog Church Street, frequently causing traffic jams and delaying bus service significantly. On many occasions in personal encounters with me, Eyam residents expressed great concern that the bus service would be routed away from Eyam, eliminating a necessity that mamy
143 National Parks Service, Washington, D C.
144 Peak District National Park Structure Plan, 1997.
177 livelihoods depend upon. At the time of my fieldwork, there was no published plan to eliminate bus service through Eyam, but I saw evidence of the terrific strain that tourists put on the system every day. Cars crowd the roadway not only on their way in, out of, or through the village, but they also park directly on sidewalks in front of businesses, homes, and even across garage and driveway entrances.
In the Bull's Head Pub in Eyam, directly across from the parish church, I watched as Norman, the proprietor, urged patrons to sign a petition demanding the construction of a new car park to accommodate the burden of parked cars. "If they have enough places to park, they'll keep off the sidewalks now won't they?" said Norman (personal interview). Villagers' opinions on this subject varied to some degree, but they all shared the same exasperation with what they feel is an unreasonable amount of trespassing and parking violations. Not surprisingly, villagers whose livelihoods or avocations related to commerce or tourism were interested in fadlitating visitors without clogging up the whole system. John Clifford, local historian and author (chapter two), shares Norman's opinion and wishes the Park would approve and fund the preparation of at least another car park. More convenient parking means that more visitors might stay in Eyam longer and purchase goods and services from the local merchants. As clearly illustrated in the results of the Visitor Survey, most visitors do not come to Eyam for everyday services and goods such as vehicle or machine repair, groceries, electronices, etc.; instead, they come because of the plague story, visiting a handful of (mostly free) historic structures and ptuchasing a few souvenir items related to the plague events.
Stephanie Lowe, Andrew Lowe, Peter Blackwell, Lynn Spreyer, and others who are not as dependent upon tourism and business with people from outside of the area simply wish the traffic problem were solved one way or another. Andrew Lowe,
Stephanie's twenty-three year old son, explained it in the following way:
178 I work five days [per week] in Chesterfield.... There's nothing good about for young men in Eyam, and I did not go to university. I supervise security with a .. . construction firm in Chesterfield, eleven miles off. When I can't have a Lift from dad—which is most days—I take the bus from Eyam through Calver where I transfer to another. Once in Chesterfield I switch off [at town centre] and wait there forty minutes for another bus up to the site.... That's two hours and three-quarters each way because I haven't got a regular [car] ride. My shift is usually through the night, so I leave after tea and return after breakfast. If I don't have public transport, I can't make it. I'll have to leave the village. [Personail interviewees]
Tourists themselves are generally a matter of indifference to villagers like Andrew, Peter, and Stephanie. They make no profit from their presence and they harbor no specific ül w lU . toward them in principle. Yet they are observably unhappy about the economic, infrastructural, and social pressures exerted in the village. Transport and parking—for themselves and the tourists—is a major source of tension and concern that had not been resolved in the village as of the time of my fieldwork.
The forces of conservation and planning are negotiated by the Peak Park under its own authority and the terrific influences of regional, national, and international organizations that include English Heritage, the National Trust, the DETR, and even the
United Nations and its UNESCO operations. Together, they are engaged in the project of keeping Eyam's vicinity (in local and ever broadening terms) stable. Unfortimately, as we will see in chapter five, these well-intended efforts and energies are doing noticeable harm to a major portion of the environment they are designed to conserve: the human communities that five there. Because of the widespread historic bias toward natural and artifactual interpretations of what constitutes environmental heritage, the cultures that constitute the living and contemporary extension of that heritage are effectively forgotten. In the well-regulated process of conserving and protecting natural.
145 This interview was conducted in my rental car as I drove Andrew to his Chesterfield transfer location. I offered him the ride in return for the courtesy of another joint interview with him and his mother on a previous occasion. He refused my offer to take him directly to his job site.
179 landscape, zind architectural characteristics of the Eyam area, guidelines seek to manage
an unwritten and inflexible aesthetic standcurd for what constitutes the village and its most valued characteristics. There is a terrific tension inherent in the process because,
obviously, Eyam is not just a material object. It is a natural, changing, unpreprogrammed human community that inhabits a physical and conceptual space over which there are great struggles for control: over historic notions of preservation and over a community's inalienable need to change.
180 CHAPTER 6
"THEY ARE DETERMINED ITS CHARACTER SHALL NOT BE DESTROYED":
LOCAL RESPONSES TO CHANGE AND HERITAGE CONSERVAHON IN EYAM
I believe the English heritage preservation industry and public policy frameworks do a remarkable job in protecting specific aspects of the Peak District and its built and natural treasures. As many of my American Mends and acquaintances who have
travelled in England remark, it is like a picture book there. In England, we find (and look for) visual evidence of the country's narrative past that is represented in books, films, and traditional narratives. In many ways, Americans have adopted England's cultural past as our own cultural past (Robin Hood's philanthropy and challenge of authority;
Arthur's egalitarianism; England's resolve and might against continental foes during the twentieth century; and so on). The survival of historic landscapes, structures, and other features of England's environment provide persuasive evidence that American fantasy about its own and England's past may be true in some measure. Immersion in the
English countryside, towns, and cities provides a humbling perspective on what we in the U.S. consider to be historically significant and aged. English law, following English cultural predilection, places a high value on the integrity of its collective memory, especially as it is embodied in the built and natural English nation-site. As I remarked earher in this dissertation, the English are avid enthusiasts for their own. past and consume it as tourists with a terrific appetite and educated, knowledgeable stance.
181 English national, regional, and local policies and fundamental cultural interests ensure
that the nation-site's historical treasures are maintained, highly visible, and accessible.
On these terms, the Peak District National Park planning authority is a strong
and solid leader. Their policies—in the main—are clear and readily enforceable through
jurisdictions at many levels. But in spite of and because of its success at protecting and
presenting a specific rendering of local heritage, it is having an overall hollowing effect
that is not fully realized, I believe, because of the fetish for surface, structure, and fixity I
describe in chapter five. The pressure exerted by these preservation interests is actually
producing "a complex of disruption and change" (Dohar 3) among the living daily
residents of Eyam. Not to make too fine a point, it is curious to note that this
observation w^as already made by William Dohar in reference to the plague's effects on societies an d com m unity groups in the late ^fiddle Ages.^^^ I do n o t a t all intend to equate UK preservation policies with something as destructive, deadly, and wholly negative as epidemic bubonic plague. However, that these policies—Hke the plague crisis four hundred years ago—are having and insidious and diniinishing effect on a previously stable community is indeed significant from a foUdoristic point of view. Both are threats to the existing social order and both lead residents to recognize and emphasize the categorical differences between locals and outsiders, for it is in them that
the threat is ultimately embodied. Both types of crises have forced (or at least encouraged) people to classify themselves philosophically and also in terms of action.
The community changes. The buildings and narrative essentializing the community remain protected, agreeably static. Some lament it and others take it in stride. Still others ignore or don't even recognize the change and proceed relatively unaffected.
146 See chapter two.
182 Cultural Change and the Principle of Cultural Conservation
From a folklorist's perspective, change—unwanted disruption and even destruction, continuity and discontinuity—can be a normal part of cultural Ufe.
Communities, local cultures, come and go all the time and Uttle can or perhaps should change that. In my own experience during the summer of 1990,1 came across a fascinating complex of narratives, beUefs, etymologies, and oral testimonies concerning a place called Scuffletown in western Kentucky along the Ohio River. I was conducting foUdife and architectural survey fieldw ork for the Kentucky FoLklife Program and
Kentucky Heritage Council. People I encountered in the River Bottoms area between
Owensboro and Henderson occasionally referred to this place called Scuffletown.
Curiosity aroused, I investigated further and discovered through interviews and casual conversations that there had indeed been a place by that name there, Uvely and significant in terms of local culture and trade. When steamboat commerce on the Ohio
River grew in the latter third of the nineteenth century, Scuffletown emerged as a natural stopping point and dock through which traders could shuttle cargo between steamboat and local wagon routes leading to population centers nearby. The population of laborers, tradesmen, and others who made their living by this trade quickly constituted
Scuffletown and gave it the life of a community. But when the railroad was run through the area in the 1930s, the need for smaller dock towns ceased and Scuffletown—its economic bread and butter cut off—quickly faded away as well.^'^^ In 1990 with Mr.
147 The 1920 census counts 133 households in the area defined as Scuffletown, with a total population of as many as 500 or more. By 1950, oral history suggests, Scuffletown was all but gone, most of its residents relocated or dead. For the first major foUdoristic undertaking of a comprehensive community oral history, see Lynwood MonteU's The Saga of Coe Ridge.
183 Nat Stanley^”*®, I visited the location—a lonely and wild stretch of pecan forest along the
river—and found only one structural remnant of the old town: a sodden and rotting
roof frame, small and almost completely concealed beneath tangled undergrowth. There
was nothing more to be seen.
In retrospect, I realize that the three or four people who knew and remembered
Scuffletown for me (including Nat Stanley) expressed no particular sadness or
unhappiness that Scuffletown was gone. After aU, Ufe in the Scuffletown River Bottoms was very hard and uncomfortable, only comparatively easy in the summer and then
dangerously brutal in the winter. Those who lived there did so for economic reasons, not by romantic choice. In cultural memory and folklore, on the other hand, Scuffletown can be enjoyed on different terms and with no economic or demographic strings attached, just the memory's continuing and changing appeal and utility in the local sense of place in the present. My informants exhibited great pleasure and enthusiasm for telling me about Scuffletown. Indeed, local lore is still endowed w ith a ribald memory for the place, but its coming and going are apparently less important in the overall memory than are the things that add texture to its memory and meaning for those who hold it. In sum,
Scuffletown manifested itself out of a sudden population rush gathered in response to economic opportunity; it fell apart, hkewise, through the sudden decline of that same economy. Like countless other communities, it came and went according to local conditions.
My concern as a folklorist in a place such as Eyam, however, is that the agents of change are not natural events or social-political acts randomly effecting the village.
Instead, they are deliberate and focused in their specificity: the Peak Park uses calculations of its own device to determine how Eyam m ay change in some respects and
148 Mr. Stanley had lived on the outskirts of the Scuffletown area as a young boy and, at the time of my contact with him, resided in Henderson, Kentucky nearby.
184 seeks to prevent change in others. Unfortunately, the Park uses the principle of general
"public good" to alibi policies that could easily be less destructive on a living community
while sldll providing plenty for the greater public good. This is a tenet that is familiar to
American folklorists under the important methodological and terminological framework
of culhiral conservation.
While the United Kingdom was exploring its options and interests in historic
preservation and sustained development (see chapter five), the United States was doing
the same thing, albeit within different legal, historical, and cultural contexts. A s the
American national Bicentennial celebration neared in the 1970s, there occurred a
watershed victory in terms of public planning and development policy. American cultural specialists, environmental lobbyists, and lawmakers finally agreed and made into law the assum ptions that (a) cultures, living groups of people and their loays of life could and should be considered part of any environmental context and that (b) any development project that threatened the well being of a local cultural group by definition threatened the environment itself. This was realized in the 1976 American Folklife
Preservation Act, an Act of Congress that clearly defined culture in terms intended to be useful in policymaking decisions. As defined by the Act,
the term "American folklife" means the traditional expressive culture shared within the various groups in the United States: familial, ethnic, occupational, religious, regional; expressive culture includes a wide range of creative and symbolic forms such as custom, belief, technical sldll, language, literature, art, architecture, music, play, dance, drama, ritual, pageantry, handicraft; these expressions are mainly learned orally, by imitation, or in performance, and are generally maintained without benefit of formal instruction or institutional direction. (Loomis 26)
The Act was not created simply to define cultural groups and their comprehensive experience (folklife) in legal terms, but it was also a new and formal implementation of existing concerns for protecting national culture and history, intensified by a focus on the
185 Bicentennial. Previously, the Smithsonian Institution and such organizations could prepare exceptional museums and collections, heightening people's understanding of certain aspects of American shared experience. But the full might and vigor of a federal government whose habit and pride are at least partly invested in its ability to lead the world in developments of many kinds—industrial, technological, social, legal, medical, environmental—could have no reflexive, internal way to recognize and provide for the weU being of cultural groups placed at risk through development activities unless they are specifically identified in sophisticated terms in policy and law. This sophisticated definition of culture (as something valuable and potentially under threat) has proven to be a valuable mechanism, now internalized and frequently invoked.^^^
As defined by Ormond Loomis in his 1983 cultural conservation task force report:
Cultural conservation is a concept for organizing the profusion of private and public efforts that deal with traditional and community life. It envisions cultural preservation and encouragement as two faces of the same coin. Preservation involves planning, dociunentation, and maintenance; and encouragement involves publication, public events, and educational programs. In application, cultural conservation means a systematic, coordinated approach to flie protection of cultural heritage, (iv)
Loomis's report provides the official guide to be used as an interpretive basis for conservation efforts that deal with culture.^^° In this American context, cultural heritage
149 See especially the works of Benita Howell (1990), Nicholas Spitzer (1992), Dierdre Evans-Pritchard (1987), Douglas DeNatale (1994), Mary Hufford (1986; 1994), Thomas Carter and Carl Fleishhauer (1988), David W hisnant (1983), Michael Ann Williams (1990); and B urt Feintuch's edited volum e (1986) for a very broad survey of approaches to, scholarly responses to, and applications of cultural conservation in the United States.
150 Here I use care to emphasize "conservation matters that deal with culture" as distinct from "cultural conservation." While the concepts set forth in the American Folklife Preservation Act and the Loomis report have been readily adopted and advanced through foUdoristic efforts and methods, the term cultural conservation itself
186 means something significantly beyond that set forth in. UN and UK definitions of the
same term (described in chapter five). While I have attempted to illustrate that UK
policies use "cultural heritage" to refer (in word and practice) mainly to natural and built environments believed to have special value, the American extension of the same
term in planning and conservation contexts makes a critical and very different leap to
include ephemeral aspects of expressive, living cultures along with already accepted
material remnants and markers of past cultures. Thus Cultural Conservation, as a specific theoretical and practical approach to handling human communities in a developing world, "embraces intangible as well as tangible elements of... cultural heritage equally; it does not segregate the creator from the creation or the process from the product" (Antonsen, et. al 3).
In the American context—including federal law but also influencing all manner of preservation and planning, including the National Trust, the National Parks Service, the
Departments of Transportation and the Interior, and especially academic and scholarly interests—the cultural heritage of a place can be said to include the natural and built environments and the living cultures of its local groups "as an indivisible whole"
(Hufford 1994). In Appalachia, for example, most would agree that local practices worth conserving would include playing the banjo, singing ballads, telling Jack Tales, and practicing homeopathic medicine with local resources, etc. In Eyam, familiar local practices worth conserving would certainly include wells-dressing, guising (mumming), the Carnival parade, the vertical-spit sheep roast and toasted oat cakes events, St.
Lawrence Parish Church's Plague Commemoration Ceremony, the Eyam Belles Maypole
appears to be falling into gradual disuse. Today, these same principles are taken for granted in cultural conservation and heritage preservation fields but have been gradually subsumed by the more enduring and inclusive terminology of public folklore. (See also Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett's highly influential article "Mistaken Dichotomies," 1988 for background on the broader appeal of public folklore as a professional term.)
187 Dance^^^, etc. Unfortunately, it unreasonable to purport that a local culture
(Appalachian, Derbyshire, or any other) is defined by and somehow contained within a
certain group of performable traditions or seasonal events. Such practices are
expressions of local culture, not embodiments of them; consequently, aiming to conserve
those few practices cannot guarantee the conservation of the culture that performs them.
This is the conundrum in the American enactment of its cultural conservation priorities. As Mary Hufford, Shalom Staub, Burt Feintuch, Nicholas Spitzer, Erika
Brady, and other folklorists have described through case studies ranging from communities in the New Jersey Pine Barrens to fur trappers in southeastern Missouri to
Yemeni immigrants in Philadelphia, there is a vast difference between advancing the cultural conservation ideology and implementing policies that protect cultural groups from the natural processes of continuity and change of which they are inextricably a part. Although cultural conservation ideology is a very important component of
American cultural disciplines and public policies, its implementation remains experimental. Recent trends include envisioning culture and environment as a kind of
■"biocultural diversity" (Hufford) that demands the inclusion of local knowledge in any planning movement. Likewise, it became clear during the 1980s and 1990s that cultural conservation carmot be explored in practice without the cooperation of support of many kinds of organizations and disciplines. Staub, in his description of the Pennsylvania
Heritage Parks Program, addresses this issue and provides a good account of the vast collaboration between state, federal, private, commercial, and especially local partners
151 In Eyam, like many communities in England and even on the continent, May-pole dancing performed by groups of small children is a local tradition. Curiously, Derbyshire villages feature May-pole dancing during their autumn carnivals. During Wakes Week (Carnival), a group of Eyam men dress as humorous caricatures of women and perform a raucous, intentionally inept May-pole dance on the square. This is done at sundown when most tourists are gone, yet it is very well attended by locals. Women and older girls arrive with buckets of water and super-soakers and "ambush" the dancing men when their lampoons seem to deserve playful rebuke from real women.
188 in the development of the Heritage Parks Program. Interagency and grass-roots support on this scale is difficult to achieve and is not entirely common.While there is stdl scrutiny on the principles and practices of cultural conservation in the U.S., it remains far from ideal. Too often, cultural conservation is ultimately driven by the needs and expectations of tourism and economic pressures. While cultural conservation at its best might integrate cultural forms of the past and present in a dynamic that is free of economic, social, class, or political influences, this is probably ultimately impossible. I also sense growing trouble for cultural conservation in the U.S. on the ground that it has owed so much to ethnographic methods and perspectives and yet the problematization of ethnography as a hopelessly manufactured position (and artifact) with little connection to the observed continues (Dorst, James Clifford, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett,
Appadurai). It continues to a point, I am beginning to sense, at which ethnography's utility as a foundational element of the cultural conservation paradigm must surely harm the integrity of the paradigm itself. My own personal conviction is changing from wholehearted endorsement of cultural conservation methods in appropriate contexts to a more distanced conviction that it is ultimately impossible to conserve culture. Culture changes, period. Anything proposing to inhibit or direct change constitutes an intellectual and maybe even ethical problem. I see the paradigm as ever more politically and socially constituted, in the end just another externally conceived factor (albeit wdth a good alibi, for now) bringing about shifts in culture.
I hope that it is clear that I bring up the American notion of cultural conservation as an interesting ideology only. Few American folklorists, I suspect, (including me)
152 See Thomas Carter's and Carl Heischhauer's The Grouse Creek Cultural Survey for a detailed account of project-oriented collaboration between folklorists and heritage preservation specialists. They point to the advantages to be gained through collaboration, but the process is far from simple and at times highlights the disciplinary and methodological differences that can get in the way of efficient collaboration.
189 would say cultural conservation is a successful and unproblematic idea and practice.
Indeed, it is complicated and unsolved. Yet many would agree that the principles
informing it—that culture is part of an environment (and vise versa), that culture
changes, that culture is living and expresses itself in tangible and intangible forms,
etc.—are very important and have been useful to experiment with. Cultures and their
expressions are certainly not being conserved and protected on any large scale. In fact,
most Americans themselves are probably unaware that the American Folklife Center and
its various cultural missions exist at all. On the other hand, the American cultural
conservation model presents ideas that could be very useful in the case of Eyam and
Peak Park planning restrictions. Because the planning system is based on a definition of heritage that fails to include the living world in its assessment of existing and valued resources, that living world is placed at even greater risk. Thus because local cultures are placed at risk hy a system acting ostensibly in favor of protecting local culture (as heritage), the living world faces an avoidable, unnecessary challenge. Were the Peak
Park to recognize the living world, local culture, local folklife, the local cultural perspective in its definition of valued heritage resources, a great deal of frustration and discomfort might be avoided.
While American-style cultural conservation ideology is based on the expressed principle that intangible^^^ aspects of any cultural group— historical or contemporary—is inherently valuable and should be viewed as precious, the same ideology places no absolute mandate to conserve, preserve, or freeze any cultural group in space and time as a matter of compulsive salvation. Capturing or containing, forbidding or preventing cultural change in the absolute is neither desirable nor possible. Indeed, the term conservation as an alternative to preservation "registers the dynamism of cultural
153 This would include but not be limited to "any non-physical element of expressive culture; abstract ideas; traditions; skills; memories" (Loomis).
190 resources, implying that, hke natural phenomena, cultural phenomena inevitably change"
(Hufford 1994). The cultural conservation project is designed to acknowledge its own inherent limitations in that change is inevitable and natural and even conservation may not, in some cases, be a justifiable remedy. Folklorist Mary Hufford has observed that cultural conservation is a cultural activity in itself, but it is one that should be "guided as much as possible by those whose cultures are affected" (3). Any conservation actions must be informed by representatives of the cultures at risk in order to avoid sponsoring "homogenous images of [local] culture produced through centralized planning" (3-4). In a special report I coordinated and edited for the purpose of bringing cultural conservation principles into formal discussion among relevant agencies in
Kentucky in the early 1990s, oiu committee asserted the following:
Cultural conservation is about protecting groups of people and their ways of life, their artistic expressions, and their modes of communication. Cultural conservation is a concept for enabling communities to continue to exist, or to fail, under their ozun terms. (Antonsen, et. al v)
Unfortunately, the method of Eyam's conservation management is conducted without an awareness of the culture-as-environmental-resource principle frequently embraced by
American planners.^^ Thus, in service of Park visitors who travel by car and who would be put off by having their access to village and town centers restricted. Park policy encourages ever more visitor traffic while absolving itself of attendant and obvious infrastructural traffic management responsibilities by claiming they are out of
1541 should point out that although the American principle of cultiual conservation is a useful model and one that could be applied to great effect in other planning-restricted locales such as Eyam in the U.K., 1 do not intend to present it or the American approach to American culture and law as a perfect and thoroughly transferrable model. It is an ideal whose implementation is imperfect, unpredictable, and often problematic in intellectual and practical terms. For additional strong discussions and case studies concerning cultural conservation in practice, see Burt Feintuch's (ed.) The Conservation of Culture: Folklorists and the Public Sector (1986) and Benita Howell's Cidtural Heritage Conservation in the American South (1990).
191 their jurisdiction.; "The National Park Authority is a planning authority, but not a
highway authority" that can improve or increase roadways themselves {Local Plan 11.4).
Thus, the Park feels obliged to maximize tourism and recreational use (by tourists and
locals) of the Park's valued natural and built resources while prohibiting development
that would disturb "quiet enjoyment of the valued characteristics of the Park" (7.3),
even if they are needed and endorsed by local interests. Thus we have a case in Eyam
that shows how a very strong planning, development, and conservation organization has
been missing the forest for the trees. In its grand and complicated effort to preserve
local heritage and cultural treasures, the Park and other UK planning organizations have
promulgated a system that is ironically eliminating what Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett
refers to as the "Ufe world" (1998) that is Eyam village, that bears the names found in
the plague narrative which is so zealously preserved, that is the recipient and bearer of
local tradition and folkUfe, that is finding it difficult enough to maintain community in
an economically changing world without having to deal with extemaUy contrived
conservation and development guidelines. Much earUer in the twentieth century, theorist
Walter Benjamin, writing in particular about mass-produced works of art, eerily foretold
of "a tremendous shattering of tradition" should (applying his idea in cultural terms) a
sense of community be separated firom "the fabric of tradition," for "This tradition itself
is thoroughly aUve and extremely changeable" (1936). W hat is being protected so
meticulously is called "Eyam, Plague Village" but is really only a specific enactment of
the idea without any particular emphasis on who fives there and constitutes the
community itself. It is the same homogenizing, centrally derived image of place that
Hufford cautions against.
What I wish to present now is final evidence from my own direct contact with
longtime Eyam residents and relative newcomers that the stringent planning environment has had a notable (though officially unrecognizable) effect on the Eyam community. But
192 therein I have also discovered to my surprise that this is not so simple a story about myopic planning interests versus a local culture in decline. Rather, there is a complicity on the parts of Eyamers in a decline perceived by local authorities, lamented by locals and enthusiasts, or even documented by folklorist ethnographers such as me. Perhaps the decUne should not be laid solely at the feet of the Peak Park so readily. I begin by addressing one of Mary Hufford's contentions about effective accountability for local cultural interests: local perspectives and input must be at the heart of planning decisions (such as conservation) that involve a community. In order to understand how this works here, we need to know who speaks for Eyam.
Who Represents Eyam?
How convenient it would be were there a single, fully endorsed voice speaking on behalf of the village at aU times and in all matters. This voice could present the definitive plague narrative and display it in verbal, pictorial, and dioramic form. It could soundly answer the medical and epidemiological questions concerning what really constituted the plague in Eyam once and for all. It could write all the brochures, historical leaflets, museum displays, and tour-guide scripts employed throughout the village. It could address the concerns of one unified pubHc body in all local governance matters. It could clearly defend the village's position in terms of the Peak Park's planning obligations. It could negotiate transportation, industry, and tourism policies that satisfy everyone in Eyam. It could even determine which historical period's memory would provide consistent aesthetic guidance for all matters of development large and small, today, tomorrow, and long into the future—if such guidance would be approved at all. It would be wonderful, but of course it can never be so.
The reality is that everyone and anyone who knows about Eyam can speak for it.
As cultural specialists have known for at least a century, there is no inherent ownership
193 in representation.^^® The community is full of people with different opinions or no strong opinions at aU about the village. Many are deeply invested financially, emotionally, and professionally in the preservation of Eyam for one purpose or another.
Others are just as deeply invested in activities and lifestyles that are considered to be antithetical to the village's historical representation or conservation. Some are relatively new to the village and some are longtime and even lifelong residents. Still others are passers-through: tourists, business travellers, and even folklorists Like me conducting fieldwork for a degree at a foreign university.
Local Historians
In chapter four, I provide a brief history of written historical interpretations of the Eyam site. Most of them concern the plague, but they include other aspects of local history such as geology and mineralogy; Roman, Viking, and Norman settlement patterns; and economic and political trends—spanning more than a millennium of local history all together. While Eyam and its history are interesting subjects that have gained the attention of historians outside of the area, the histories most readily available and granted the greatest popular credence are those of the local historians. That means not historians of the locality, but rather Eyam historians who are and were local residents.
The first and undoubtedly most influential (in terms of shaping Eyam's traditional plague narrative) local historian to contribute a major and enduring history was William Wood. Wood was bom and raised in Eyam. He grew fascinated with its history and, especially, the plague affairs through hearing oral narratives and other
155 See Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"; Clifford and Marcus "On Ethnographic Allegory"; John Dorst's The Written Suburb: An American Site, an Ethnographic Dilemma-, and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett's Destination Culture for a good range of scholarship and essays concerning the nature of language, narrative, expression, and representation.
194 traditional expressions that he believed related to the village's fascinating past. His professional training was minimal but his enthusiasm and drive spurred him on to become a local authority and author. He published the History and Antiquities of Eyam in
1842, a work that went through seven published revisions and eleven reprintings. As I observed in chapter four, it is extremely difficult to write about Eyam without referring to Wood or, for that matter, to think of Eyam without relying on an image or detail first reported by him. Wood's narrative is the narrative accepted most widely as the Eyam plague story. The version of Eyam's plague that is known farthest and widest is, essentially, his. It is even taught in English local history curricmla as an elective unit.
Wood was proud of his village and made a major contribution by sharing his feelings with others across England. In the book he writes, "How rapturous must be the feelings of the tourist who ascends the peak of this mountain, and beholds on every hzmd the unaffected handmarks of Nature!" (1842 12). Even in 1842, Wood was plainly aware th at his audience incduded non-locals w ho w ould or m ight visit the Eyam area.^^^
Since Wood aggregated the local traditional plague narrative in the middle of the nineteenth century, there has been a fairly steady lineage of local historians resident in
Eyam. The next in line was Clarence Daniel, author of The Story of Eyam Plague loith a
Guide to the Village (1977), William Wood: Weaver of Wool and Words, An Appreciation
(1965), and numerous small pamphlets and mini-guides describing specific features of
Eyam's village, surroundings, or plague narrative. Although one can purchase Daniel's major work {The Story of Eyam Plague) or find it in a local history library wdth great ease, his contributions to the overall image and narrative of Eyam did not expand upon or contradict Wood's account in any meaningful way. Daniel's materials constituted an
156 See chapter four for a more thorough account of Wood's influence on the remembered image of Eyam as well as additional discussion of his contribution to the growing local tourism industry.
195 update with a new site guide for tourists traversing the village. More importantly, they added to the growing collection of souvenir and memento items sold in just a small number of Eyam shops as well as the St. Lawrence Parish Church book stall, earning a few pence per sale for the local tradespeople and church as weU as Daniel himself.
Following Daniers impromptu term as local historian, John G. Clifford and
Francine Clifford answered the call for an authoritative voice to represent the history and plague story of Eyam for tourists and other enthusiasts in the way their predecessors had. I had the great privilege of gaining the acquaintance of John and Fran during my most recent fieldwork period in Eyam (1997), interviewing both formally as well as sharing many hours with one or the other in lively discussions of this quirk of
Eyam's written record or that nezu insight that the husband-wife team had contributed.
They are both retired and have lived in Eyam for nearly two decades, having moved to the village because they found the community appealing and its history irresistible. As of 1997, John and Francine are highly visible and active members of the Eyam community, he especially playing leading dignitary roles in major local events such as the
WeUs-Dressing blessing ceremony.John is a leading member of a group who, in the past decade, were successful in generating funds, planning, dedicating, and opening the new Eyam Museum which has become one of only three major institutional tourist destinations in the village (the others are St. Lawrence Parish Church and Eyam Hall; discussed later). John also makes himself available, often for a fee, to speak about
157 In, the Peak area, many local villages participate in a tradition of producing what are known as WeUs-Dressings. These are mosaics, of a sort, made with all natural, Hving materials (such as flowrer petals, nuts, and mosses) pressed into clay backings in frames often as large as a bam door. Design themes usually involve biblical scenes, and the ornamental constructions are placed upon the site of an existing or known past well as thanks for the pure water. Villages compete in friendly competition, and many village's WeUs-Dressing ceremonies kick off a brief period of celebration or carnival. For more on the WeUs-Dressing tradition, see Clarence Daniel (The Story of Wells Dressing in Eyam).
196 Eyam. at club events and other social or municipal gatherings aU over the region where he
has become something of a celebrity because of his stewardship of Eyam's history.
Fran Clifford, on the other hand, plays a somewhat different role in their joint
avocation. She labored hard and with great care to co-research and co-author with John
a compendium of aU records (with interpretations and annotations) in the Eyam Parish
Register from 1630-1700 (Clifford and Clifford 1993). In addition to her research
activities and general support of museum and other lecture activities, Fran has become part of a group consisting mostly of long-term residents who maintain certain local
traditions and community-oriented activities such as WeUs-Dressing.
Tour Guides
Catering to the interests of more serious tourists and tour groups visiting Eyam, a smaU number (counting two in 1997) of individuals offer their services as tour guides.
Their advertisements are difficult to find—posted on business cards inside the local fish and chips store, discreetly placed (or perhaps nearly concealed) among other notices on the Eyam Museum's racks of goods, posted deep inside the Eyam Carnival Program— almost certainly missed by tourists who might wish for the services. According to their advertisements, the tour services generaUy consist of a two-hour walking tom of the viUage with stops at aU of the central plague sites and other ancient sites of interest, informed by an explanation of the Eyam plague story. By treating Eyam as a tour destination^^^, the guides establish Eyam as a display and walk their customers through it much like a museum tour guide would. They clearly discourage very small groups by requiring a minimum £20 fee (roughly $32 U.S.). During my 1997 fieldwork stay, I was not fortunate enough to meet with or interview either local tour guide although I
158 See Kirshenblatt-Gimblett's Destination Culture for more on the conversion of place into destination and heritage display.
197 attempted to make contact. I have it on the authority of several other Eyam acquaintances (including the Cliffords) that the tour guides were not bom and raised in
Eyam but rather moved into the village as adults.
The Imagined Village on Display I: The Eyam Museum
The Eyam Museum was opened in 1995 in a converted Methodist chruch that had fallen into disuse. Since it's relatively recent opening, it has become one of the three major tourist stops and places of commerce in the village, along with Eyam Hall and the parish church. Like the other two, the museum is centrally located (on Hawkshül Road just off Church Street on the way up to Eyam Moor). Across from the museum are a new car park and Eyam's existing athletic fields (consisting of a major soccer field for the most part). The museum is funded through grants by the Peak District National
Park and other local authorities as well as private donations and admission fees. The collection consists mostly of a timeline of Eyam's past emphasizing the plague, with full- scale dioramas dramatizing specific events (such as George Viccars receiving the damp bolt of cloth purportedly containing plague-infected fleas; an adult victim prostrate in bed showing advanced, gruesome symptoms of bubonic plague) made famous in the
WiUiam Wood version of the history. Much of the text accompanying exhibit materials was written by John Clifford (personal interview, 1997) and extracted from existing histories and primary documents. Special items in the collection—such as an original first edition of Wood's history—were donated, mostly from the collections of William
Woods' descendants and Clarence Daniel's estate.
While there is a director and a curator, the museum is staffed almost entirely by docents who volunteer their time. Exact figures reflecting museum attendance are not available to me, but based on my observation over four weeks in the village in 1997, the museum attracts a large number of visitors. The museum gift shop is well appointed
198 with reprints of major histories, resale works such as poetry and drama dealing with
Eyam's plague^^^, and by my account is the major local seller of publications concerning
Eyam's plague and history. Unlike most of the other plague-period sites in Eyam
(including the Plague Cottages and various homes where narrated events occurred), the
Eyam Museum and Eyam Hall (and the church, to a diminishing degree) are the few attractions that offer more than a facade and a sign accounting for its significance. The
Eyam Museum draws people in and provides extensive narrative, cartographic, artistic, and other information concerning Eyam's history and, chiefly, the plague catastrophe.
As Barbara K-G has written, extracting relics from the community and providing contextualizing {in sihi or in context) detail further converts Eyam into a destination worth touring, reinforcing the need to have a museum in the first place. However, as
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett also observes, placing cultural artifacts on display removes them from the location of their meaning and distances them from the heritage they are purported to represent. We can see this having an analagous effect on the visitor's experience in the village itself: now, it is more appealing or more likely that visitors will learn of the church's role in plague events (for example) by reading about it in the
Museum rather than visiting the church itself. By putting Eyam's history on display, the museum has converted the church and other sites into artifacts that should be viewed on display in the museum context, displacing formerly prominent sites and relegating them to situated display.
159 These include publications such as David Clarke's Ghosts and Legends of the Peak District (1991), R. M. Beaumont's The Reverend William Mompesson, 1638-1708: Hero of Eyam and His Life in Nottinghamshire—A Tribute (1979), Edward Hoare's The Brave Men of Eyam (1881), and especially JiU Paton W alsh's novella A Parcel of Patterns (1983).
199 The Imagined Village on Display II: Eyam Hall
Eyam Hall is the name of the local gentry's estate. Many ancient towns in
England have such a manor, and Eyam Hall right on Church Street is impossible to miss with its exaggerated size and distinctively stylized exterior.
m
Figure 7. Eyam Hall exterior
Eyam Hall was built in the seventeenth century and has been in the possession of the
Wright family ever since. Although there are no clear published indications of this, the estate's properties include something quite significant in terms of the village's history, image, and public appeal: the Plague Cottages (see chapter three). According to Miss
Clarice White, an elderly Eyam-bom woman who has lived in one of the plague cottages nearly aU of her adult life, the "Old Wrights"^®° made the Plague Cottages available to
Eyam residents who were short on means. That is how she and her husband (now
160 The parents of John Wright, the current Lord in residence and head of the household.
200 deceased) were able to secure such a dwelling in the very heart of desirable Eyam. In the
early 1990s, the elder Wright passed away and control of the estate transferred
automatically to son John Wright who moved to Eyam and quickly asserted a new vision
for the Hall. Under his direction, it was opened to the public as the Eyam Hall Manor
House and Craft Centre. Unfortunately, Clarice worries, she may soon have to
surrender her desirable but extremely modest cottage when, as she was informed, the
Wrights wiU begin assessing rental fees that are much closer to normal.
The Wrights themselves maintain their privacy within the context of their historic manor house, preferring to show portions of the estate not used by the family on a regular basis. Eyam Hall is run like a major historical site, tended by a site manager.
His organizational tasks are relatively rigorous, for Eyam Hall is by far the most complex of the three major tourist sites in the village. Not only is the manor itself open for tours on several days each week (requiring significant maintenance and staffing), the
Hall provides hands-on programs for school children, unique seasonal events and performances (Wright Family Victorian Christmas^^^. Carnival-week private concerts and plays, etc.), and manages a small mall of shops known as the Craft Centre.
The Craft Centre's shops and most of the objects sold in them bear no specific local historical or cultural connections. Nevertheless, the shop enclosures are incorporated into the stalls of the old stable with materials and decoration intended to provide a visual sense of consistency with such structures from an earlier period.
Understanding the nature of planning restrictions in Eyam—to which even Eyam HaU is subject—and the conventions for historic site gift shops, it is clear that this visual
161 As published in the official Eyam Hall Manor and Craft Centre web site, "The year is 1852. Find out how Peter Wright and his fctmily celebrated Christmas. Costumed guides set the scene amidst the splendour of the house decorated for a festive 19th century Christmas" (www.www.eyamhall.co.uk/default.htm, June 12 1999).
201 appearance is at once legally safe and commercially shrewd. Visitors to the Hall are
invited to "Bring the vile Victorians or the terrible Tudors to life with a visit to Eyam
Hall."^62
The premise of Eyam Hall is immersion (for £4.25 admission) in a specific past
the visitors are encouraged to appreciate, and the construction of the Craft Centre behind (admission free) maintains the illusory frame. Folklorist Robert Cantwell makes
a point that illuminates a seductive economic mechanism at work in the Eyam Hall and
the heritage industry the world over. Describing culturally themed businesses referred to by retail developers as "festival markets" (such as Boston's Quincy Market or
Baltimore's Harbor Place), he observes that "shops and taverns jockey for the quality of authenticity that seems to consist, not only in the excellence of the counterfeit, but in the possibility that we may make it, through a money transaction, our own" (1993 45). This is exactly what Eyam Hall and its Craft Centre are together taking advantage of. While the visual stimuli of a historic exterior are there to excite certain interests and emotional responses, they are a scrim that somehow provides just enough sense of removal from the normal world to make what is contained within seem reasonably exotic and consistent with the overall illusory frame.
First in the Craft Centre, there is The Buttery, a high-priced cafeteria offering
"Spinakopita or a piece of wickedly different Russian cake, all baked on the premises."^^ There is Tim Brough: Watercolour Artist Studio which features abstract and more realistic paintings with themes not at aU related to Eyam, the region, or elements of the village's historical narrative. Beside Tim Brough is The Woodworks:
Professional Picture Framers—a service outlet with no particular connection to the area
‘162 From the Eyam Hall web site (www.eyamhall.co.uk/default.htm, June 12 1999).
163 Eyam C arnival Program (1997), p. 19.
202 or the illusory time period projected by the Eyam HaU experience. Next is Glasslights, a shop with handmade (before customers' eyes) custom stained glass lamps and window hangings, almost aU rendered in a particularly narrow aesthetic sUce directly reminiscent of American Art Deco style. L is for Leather is a typical handmade leather goods outlet, specializing mostly in belts, small purses and waUets, key fobs, etc. Beyond these, there are also Copper Mountain (fotmtain and garden sculptures). Orb Music (makers and restorers of stringed instruments), and the StencU. Shop (dealer in craft stencUs and paints provided by national distributors). FinaUy there is the Saddleback Gift Shop, the requisite omnopoedia for the more traditional range of gift items one expects to find at historic sites across England: postcards (with local and extra-regional subjects), guidebooks to the region and elsewhere, Eyam-specific and plague-specific trinkets such as walking tour maps, sugar-candy black rats, locaUy relevant biblical phrases in cross- stitch kits, and various renderings of the Plague Window^^ instaUed in St. Lawrence
Parish Church.
As of my 1997 visit, Eyam HaU was clearly the dominant commercial tourist attraction. To fuUy appreciate the significance of this , you must remember how Eyam is laid out: it is essentiaUy a one-street town. There are no paraUel throughways. Church
Street—on which Eyam HaU is located—is the main artery used by almost aU residents and passers-through for any purpose. Because of the restricted movement (a viUage feature stretching back as far as recorded local history), almost aU of the historic sites of interest in the viUage are quickly accessible to aU of the tourists. Any person travelling through the viUage from Town Head to Town End wiU encounter a majority of the marked sites referred to in the plague story simply as a result of passing through. It was
164 Several decades ago, the Parish funded the production and installation of the "Plague Window," a stained glass window complex depicting the major elements of Wood's plague narrative (with a particular emphasis on the Church's role).
203 the one street along which so much has happened in the past, and it is the one street along which so many tourists amble today. That Eyam Hall draws crowds before opening on weekdays and attracts platoons of tour coaches while other equally accessible sites in the village attract noticeably less is an amazing indicator of where the tourist money passing into the village goes. Eyam Hall charges the most for entry (the only other site with a required admission fee is the Eyam Museum), offers the most fee- based programs, has the most shops with by far the most tourist and gifts goods, and attracts the largest crowds on a regular basis. It is also an indicator of what sort of impressions of Eyam tourists are taking away with them.
Like the Eyam Museum, Eyam Hall and its adjacent shops and dining area represent Eyam by distancing visitors from it (one must enter the Wright's home or the courtyard) and presenting a new version for display. Curiously, there is little to none of
Eyam, Plague Village evident in this entire site. Interior displays—even the interactive ones for children—deal with the Wright family and 17th century petty noble Life.
Courtyard displays, as already described, have little or nothing to do with local history, local industry, or local culture. Nevertheless, Eyam Hall has become the most provocative and attractive agent of display, further distressing locals who believe they can see harmful economic changes increasing and Eyam's distinctiveness as a thriving community dinrunishing.
This is a trend that has not gone unnoticed, especially by those whom the economic shift toward Eyam HaU has potentiaUy harmed the most directly: representatives of St. Lawrence Parish Church.
S t Lawrence Parish Church
St. Lawrence Parish Church on Church Street in Eyam speaks for the viUage in many ways. First and foremost, in the opinion of Reverend David Shaw (the current
204 rector), the church is a place of worship and a site of ministry to all who come. In this way, the structure and faith-based community it represents can tell of a village with a long, even ancient history punctuated by demographic and political shifts, economic successes and hardships, encounters with pestilence and other periodic threats to individuals and groups, and more. The church structure itself is perhaps the most central embodiment of the way Eyam is remembered as the plague village, the most enduring record of community and even mere habitation in the area, and certainly one of the most prominent markers that there is a living, changing, complex community situated on the village site. It is what folklorist Henry Glassie would refer to as a "tenacious, situated, complex" artifact (1983 377). Indeed, as fellow folklorist and student of
Glassie's Michael Ann Williams adds:
If we are to "read" buildings as cultural artifacts, we need to understand as fully as possible the complex relationship of how buildings are used, socially and symbolically, and how buildings are physically constructed, altered, preserved, or destroyed. (1991 3)
The church is a representative of zdl of those who built it, changed it, used it, or otherwise derived meaning from it in the past and the present. But in order to "read" the church as a cultural artifact, one must spend time with it, getting to know its cultural, historical, social contexts. Even then, the process remains reflexive and demands that the observer—the "reader"—share in the making of its meaning. Indeed, in the structure of the church itself one can read a story of sorts beginning at least as early as the Saxon period, with a thirteenth-century Norman foundation^^^ still visible, and additional architectural features marking construction and reconstruction through various periods.
165 Pevsner (1986 212).
205 Ln addition to the structure itself, a large painting on the west end of the nave
interior tells the story of St. Lawrence's persecution over the fire upon which he is said
to have been martyred, and sixteenth century murals on the clerestory level depict the
twelve nations of Israel. These features, though particular to this church, are strongly
representative of structural and artistic features found in churches throughout England.
They simultaneously record changes in community and how the church structure was
used and reflect a past in which parishioners were generally üliterate and learned the
teachings of the church through sermon and pictorial art. Adding the churchyard's ninth-century Saxon cross (see chapter three) to these textual elements and countless others, one can discern a rich, complex history embodied in the church and its properties.
For most of the village's past, the chturch structure was indisputably the center of
town: geographically, socially, structurally, and spiritually. Today, most of us in the
United States and England think of a church's nave and chapels as a place of quietness, sobriety, introspection, and most of all separation from the rude world of the rest of society where life is imperfect, often filthy, crass, commercial, dangerous, and replete with impious acts, behaviors, and people. It is still often referred to as a sanctuary. In the past—in Eyam's past as well—the church was much more than that. In Eyam's case, the church was the largest, strongest, safest structure in the entire area and its uses went far beyond the sacred. Sheep markets were often held in the St. Lawrence nave.
Meetings were held there, public conflicts resolved there (Daniel 1977). For centuries, the church was the absolute center of Eyam. Even after Eyam Hall was constructed in the seventeenth century, the church remained in its accustomed prominent position. The traditional plague account, deeply involving the church properties, its two ministers, and sacred worldviews, solidified the church even more cis the symbolic center of the village.
When tourism grew as a noticeable economy in the area sometime before William Wood
206 wrote his first edition of The History and Antiquities of Eyam, the church was the major stopping point for tourists wishing to see "the plague village." Eyam Hall was just a private, part-time residence for minor gentry who tended not to meddle in local affairs.
There was no Eyam Museum. There wasn't even a Peak District National Park to centralize and distribute guidance about Eyam from afar. When one wished to visit
Eyam and experience it first-hand, there was one place everyone had to stop: the church.
Reverend Shaw is a reluctant though knowledgeable embassador for Eyam when it comes to eager tourists. Naturally, he sees his primary mission as rninister of the
Church of England in his parish, but since his church's structure is the most visible and provocative tangible relic relating to the plague narrative, he often finds himself in the position of authority on the Eyam plague. I asked him if he has noticed a shift in the church's visibility or centrality in recent years in particular, and he answered in the affirmative:
For instance, when Eyam HaU opened there was a lot of publicity about it.... When the museum opened, it was simUar. That draws a lot more people into the viUage, obviously. And inevitably, those people wUl want to come to the church as weU. So we get a spin-off from that, as I say we don't have to go out of our way to generate pubUdty at aU. In fact, I probably go out of my way to do the opposite [laughs]. But because people will come anyway, we are glad just to be there and provide some things for the people. I think people wiU come. If they're wandering up and down the viUage—the great thing about tourists is they've got nothing to do. They wUl look at anything. So they see the church there, they see the door open, and so they come in and they look around. They don't often know what they're seeing or what they're looking at, but they come in and either Uke it or don't Uke it or feel an atmosphere or don't feel an atmosphere. I'm talking about very casual people. The more directed people who are coming because they want to see Eyam HaU or they want to visit the museum or they want to go around and reaUy jet up on those things, that's fine. And they wUl come in and they wiU probably have a bit more knowledge about what to look for in the chiuch. (Shaw interview 1997)
207 In contrast with David Shaw's measured and unruffled reflections on his
church's shift from the center, Susan^^ (a volunteer church assistant) spoke with me
more provocatively and with unconcealed anger toward the management of Eyam Hall,
Eyam Museum, and even other residents who moved in from outside of the village:
[Many of them] are good people. I think the best of them. But some people resent them. There is deep resentment of them and other newcomers -----
It worries and angers me when I see the effects this is having on our community and church. The church is the most important part of Eyam and a very im portant part of me.... What with the opening of Eyam Hall and the seUing of their trinkets and souvenirs, it has turned focus away from God and the church and right onto what is being sold to the tourists in that place. ... And it's all the same everywhere. It's killing the church and it kUls me to watch it. (Susan interview 1997)
There is a small financial consequence for the church as well: As the Eyam Museum and
Eyam Hall Manor and Craft Centre generate more tourist interest and gather an even larger portion of the visits over time, the church sees less income through the sale of publications, guides, and select trinkets in the bookstall and a comparable reduction in charitable donations taken at the door. Reverend Shaw acknowledges this shift and says, "My approach [to making sense of change in Eyam] would be one of the lament.
Yes, I think to a certain extent I think inevitably whenever you see change, you do feel concerned for those sort of changes that are largely wrought by economic factors"
(1997). Even as his church's congregation, the ministry, and the structure itself are changing, David maintains the belief that his church continues to reflect and embody the community, its past, and its future: "But then again, you have to say that there is another kind of prosperity that is being brought into the place by tourism and the developm ent and such things. It's no t all a lam ent" (1977).
166 This is a pseudonym. Her name and the exact nature of her role in the chtuch are withheld upon her request.
208 The Peak District National Park
&i chapter five, I have already devoted considerable energy to showing how the
Peak District National Park speaks for Eyam. Its policies are intended to strike a balance between the needs of local communities and its nationally-mandated conservation priorities. In my opinion, as also expressed in chapter five, the system is quite out of balance, favoring a national public's right to roam and the preservation of subjectively derived "most valued characteristics" over the local community's needs in the same system. Thus even though it is my contention that Eyam's local cultural needs and characteristics are undervalued and under-represented, the Peak Park nevertheless speaks for Eyam in an overly simplified way that conceals any more urgent local needs.
Local needs for housing and stability are recognized to an extent, for example, but ultimately the Park uses undocumented assumptions about economic gain through tourism as a selfsame standard for and chief unchallenged indicator of local benefit and satisfaction.
In 1995, Losehill HaU, the Park's environmental preservation and research office, conducted a survey to document tourism patterns in Eyam (1995b). The results are very interesting. Of the roughly 1,000 people on average who visit Eyam each day throughout the year, only about 10% stay for more than two hours. Even fewer stay to purchase a meal or lodge overnight. Most pass through without consuming much more than a parking space (whose revenue goes to the Park) for a few minutes and the odd trinket or two at one of the gift shops. This is hardly a limitless capital windfaU for the viUage.
Only a smaU half-dozen businesses in Eyam generate appreciable financial benefits directly from these m any visitors—and nearly aU are either food or plague-narrative oriented. LosehiU HaU's research confirms what many Eyam locals have been saying for
209 some time: most of the villagers get nothing but inconvenience and wear and tear from
all of the tourists hustled to and through the area with increasing effectiveness by the
P eak Park.
Village Residents
It is probably not a major factor for most tourists in Eyam, but of course the villagers themselves speak for Eyam. There are the pub owners and operators who greet
and serve visitors, the bed and breakfast proprietors who provide lodgings and meals as well as casual conversation about the village and whatever interests their guests. This includes the green grocer, the postal clerk, and various other tradespeople whom tourists might encounter briefly while in Eyam. If stopped in the street, Eyam villagers respond just hke any person elsewhere might: with poHte directions, with a curt dismissal, helpful or not, they speak for Eyam as individuals. The fact is, their encounters with
tourists—except when engaging in business—are generally brief and uninvited. An unscientific tally of my acquaintances' feelings about tourists in Eyam indicates that a distinct majority feel that (a) tourists have a right to be there, (b) Eyam residents have a right to go about their business undisturbed, (c) and tourists tend to disrupt the normal business of everyday life more than they intend to or know. As I will explain in greater detail shortly, I had the wonderful privilege of joining the core group of Eyam residents in the difficult but pleasurable task of decorating the Town Head wells-dressing. One evening while we took a break, some of the volunteer laborers caught on the topic of tourist intrusions into private places. All of them agreed enthusiasticcilly that such intrusions are commonplace and contribute a great deal to residents' frustrations with
210 the tourists. Peter Blackwell, a native-born Eyamer and the designer of the Town Head weU^67^ recounted w hat all present agreed is a typical scenario^^®:
You see what becomes a problem is when the tourists don't recognize the difference between the public village and private gardens or even homes. I don't know how many times I have been surprised at home—and you know how hard it is to get back to where I live—by a sight-seer peeping into my window or doorway. They don't seem to know where the outside ends and private places begin.
In response, Lynn Spreyer added that she regularly has to turn people away from her house, insisting that there is no tour. According to the locals, this problem is the most extreme for residents of the Plague Cottages. Obviously, the importance of the Plague
Cottages is weU established in just about any account of Eyam's history, and they occupy a prominent and inviting location between the church and Eyam HaU, just paces from the street. Above or beside the door of each cottage there is a stylized historic placard indicating which victims of the plague died within. The placard and the cottages' fame are the only things distinguishing them from any other private dweUing in
Eyam, but it is very easy to understand how tourists can mistake them for more than a historic exterior presented for public enjoyment. Plague Cottage dweUers, explained
Peter to me, complain about tourists frequently walking into their homes, thinking they may see the historic interiors and take a tour. It aggravates the already strained relationship between locals and tourists, causing some residents terrific frustration and some tourists understandable embarrassment.
167 Locals wiU often use "weU" as a short form for wells-dressing.
168 This is not an exact quote but a transcription of my notes taken later that evening.
211 Figure 8. Eyam’s “Plague Cottages" on Church Street (photo by C. Antonsen)
From my own firsthand experience in Eyam and according to my acquaintances there,
most villagers who do not benefit financially from tourism respect the rights and
interests of the tourists but find their presence to be annoying and inconvenient at the
least and troublesome and damaging^^^ at the other end.
I Represent Eyam
This statement strikes me as reminiscent of the famous scene firom one of my
favorite epic movies, Spartacus, in which the title character is sought for crucifixion by
the Roman rulers he defied. His devoted companions and army claim his identity in a
dramatic show of solidarity, sacrifice, sefi-incrirnination, and as a final act of defiance:
169 See the discussion, in chapter five, about transportation problems related to unmanageable tourist traffic in Eyam.
212 "I am Spartacus. I am Spartacus. I am Spartacus" rises the chorus, drowning out the
cries of Spartacus himself as he attempts to save his men one last time.
"I speak for Eyam. No, I speak for Eyam. I speak for Eyam. I speak for Eyam..
.." And so grows the chorus of those who have the responsibility. As a trained
folklorist, it does not escape me for a minute that I speak for Eyam. In fact, this entire
dissertation is one great monologue in which I—for the sake of revealing something
innate about the place, something intimate and meaningful—speak for and about the village. I am under no illusions that my perspective is truly objective or that my
conclusions are to be privileged beyond any others, even those which could utterly contradict my own. One of the wonderful things about folklore studies as a profession is that it is so intimately bound with folklore studies as an academic discipline with very bright intellects leading us cautiously into our own future. Armchair scholars of the past could contentedly read transcriptions of oral traditions (made under unclear circumstances by people in places far removed) and then make drastic proclamations concerning their meaning or function.
There is no such ignorant bliss in making unilateral or even simple analytical assessments of other cultures today. In fact, one of the most exciting developments in recent decades has been the dismantling of the notion of ethnograpy. James Clifford's profoundly influential piece entitled "On Ethnographic Allegory" (1986) categorizes ethnographic reporting as allegorical, etiological or pedagogical in that it is impossible to completely shed the observer's cultural and personal lens when describing others. We must realize, Clifford urges, that even our most painstaking and successfully descriptive and reflexive ethnographic observations ultimately constitute yet another kind of
■>70 No need to point fingers, but proponents of solar mythological interpretations, the romantic nationalists, and many other intellectual ancestors of folklore studies today were aU guilty of this (although, to be fair, these issues would not become well known for as long as another eighty, one hundred, or more years in some cases).
213 socially and cultuTciIly situated "performance emplotted by powérful stories" (98).
Other scholars have advanced this notion to surprising and insightful extremes which are highly useful for folklore studies, including folklorist John Dorst who characterizes the ethnographer and ethnography as entities that are pre-inscribed into the makeup of communities under certain (post)modem capitalist circumstances (1993). Barbara
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, also a folklorist, adds that the ethnographic process actually constitutes what it finds etnd that such artifacts "become ethnographic through processes of detachment and contextualization" (1998 3) that are essential to ethnography and display. While I will not be scrutinizing my own role as ethnographer to such an extent, I must profess my continual awareness of these issues and their very real implications concerning what I have to say and how (or not) the reader is boimd to accept it.
Bearing this in mind, a very curious thing happened to me in Eyam. As a simple matter of my presence and against my general best intentions, I was quickly and unwittingly transformed from passive observer to participant observer to direct representative of the village. I noticed what was happening almost immediately, but not after I had already allowed myself to be transformed, and I found it difficult to back off later. This unexpected translation of roles, from self-involved observer to local cultural utility has puzzled me a great deal since I first recognized it back in Eyam. In final analysis, which
I will present here, I believe this might have been the most valuable insight of my entire ethnographic project in Eyam. Not only did I find myself transformed according to the unforeseen needs of the local culture, but my higher-order conclusions about what is behind the cultural crisis in Eyam underwent a similar reconfiguration that I find terribly exciting.
214 My Minerva Experience
During a folklore class in my masters degree program, Michael Ann WiUiams described what she referred to as a "Minerva experience." (In Greek mythology,
Minerva is the goddess of knowledge.) Pity that I did not remember the specific coinage of this phrase, for I have referred to the phenomenon frequently in the years since then.
Roughly paraphrased, a Minerva experience is an experience that has the effect of transforming the subject's worldview. It is much like what is described as crossing the mythic Rubicon, with new understanding gained but impossible to fully convey to those still on the other side. Or perhaps it is another way of describing the amazing moment when the narrator of Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" finally recognizes that there is an entire world behind him, revealed only in abstract shadows cast upon the wall before him. It is hke what leads some to revel "1 have seen the hght!" or "1 found it!" but perhaps without specific moral or rehgious overtones. In any case, I had the remarkable sensation of having a Minerva experience not long after I arrived in Eyam, eager to be a hard-working and professionally controlled ethnographer.
I begin the narrative of this experience with a confession that is not much of a confession after all (at least for any reader making it this far into my dissertation). I arrived in Eyam in the summer of 1997 having already formed some conclusions about the nature and causes of community changes there. After all. I'd done some brief fieldwork and additional research on Eyam and had taken an interest in case studies that appeared similar (Chadd's Ford in Dorst's The Written Suburb, for example). I had long since grown acquainted with systemic patterns of gentrification in service of planning and development standards that placed greater value on the larger cultural good than on the good of a smaller local community, particularly when that local
215 commimity is misunderstood or even demonized.^^ Reverend Shaw of Eyam's parish
church said exactly the same thing was happening in Eyam during my 1992 interview
with him on my first visit to the village. This sort of thing, I was convinced, was
happening in Eyam. Simple as that. Go document and describe it.
Assigning teams in this dramatic contest was easy: use vernacular terminologies
of Locals and Nezucomers, pit them against one another, and pin much of the blame on the
Newcomers. After all, it's always the outsiders who bring in the plague.^^ Finally, add
in a giant public planning bureaucracy such as the Peak Park and you have your
headline, or thesis statement as it may be:
LOCAL COMMUNITY LOSES TURF WAR AGAINST MIGHTY DEVELOPMENT INTERESTS
Fuyidamental Misunderstanding of Culture at Heart of Crisis
In many ways, this is absolutely true in Eyam's case. Evidence and discussion I have already offered in earlier chapters remains valid and reflects the same kinds of community changes as those described by Dorst, DeNatale, and even Reverend Shaw.
There is gentrification in Eyam, the planning system needs desperately to advance its understanding of culture and heritage, and a formerly stable and unique community is quickly passing through processes of transformation, dimiiushment, and reinvention.
The local community is losing the struggle against change.
171 See especially Douglas DeNatale's work and commentary on Lowell, Massachusetts, where poorer minority populations were utterly dismembered and dislocated in order to "revitcdize" the area's cityscape.
172 Remember George Viccars, the Eyam Newcomer implicated in bringing the plague to the village? (See chapter three.) Elsewhere in the world, it was the Jews or the poor or the manual laborers (see chapter two).
216 Among my hypotheses that I expected to confirm were that (1) there is a fundamental tension between Locals and Newcomers zmd (2) that Newcomers exhibited a pattern of moving into the village like Conquistadors and usurping the positions of representation and authority. There was plenty of evidence, some of which I have documented in this chapter already: Of all of the "voices" to speak for Eyam—the
Cliffords (local historians), the tour guides, the Wrights (Eyam HaU), and even David
Shaw (the church), almost aU are newcomers with no ancestral lineage (excepting the
Wrights) in Eyam. This pattern is convincingly documented and explained by Dorst in his study of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania: First there was
the closing of the old general store in Chadds Ford, the appearance of the first planned suburban development in the area, the formation of an indigenous community organization to resist unwanted development....
SymbolicaUy, at least, these events inaugurate two decades of social and cultural transformation. By the end of this period, Chadds Ford is a new kind of place. . .. An account of this transformation is necessarily a history of emergent institutions and an interpretation of the discourses that surround these institutions. Most relevant in the Chadds Ford case are the institutions devoted to natural and cultural preservation. CoUectively, they produce and reproduce the legitimizing discourse that sustains the Site. (81)
The Chadds Ford case appeared to mirror circumstances in Eyam. Like Chadds Ford,
Eyam has undergone economic changes and come under rapid and increasing pressure for suburban development and housing needs. Soon these pressures began forcing financially pressed long-time residents out of town and bringing wealthier newcomers in, and these same newcomers organized their resoruces and energies to protect their newly adopted community site in terms of a specific, more perfect image that is based on pastoral imagery, romantic narratives, and fascination for a specific rendition of the local past. Eyam, perhaps more so than Chadds Ford, even had to sustain the influence of the Peak Park and other planning organizations that operate imder the principles of natural and cultural preservation yet fail to recognize the nature and needs of the living
217 community being displaced. I had sided with the locals and, although I valued and
respected what I believed to be their positions, secretly despised the controlling
tendencies of newcomers.
Back to my Minerva experience. I had been invited by Fran Clifford to join in the
effort of decorating the Town Head well. I knew what weUs-dressings were, but I had
no idea what kind of excruciating physical labor I was getting myself into. Briefly
outlined, this is the process of making the Town Head well:
Approximately ten days before the dedication of the wells-dressings and the
official opening of Eyam Carnival week, a small handful of dedicated local
working men retrieve the aging wooden frame (which measures 8' high x 6' wide
and 10" thick) and "puddle it" full of a rich, moist clay that has already been
smoothed and rid of major contaminants such as small stones and other organic
fragments. Once puddled, it is covered in plastic to retain moisture^^ and
transported to the Davies family garage where it is laid out on sawhorses hke the
surface of a large, precious table, safe from the elements. The following
morning—one week before the well is to be blessed in a festive pubhc
ceremony—we workers gather to receive our work orders. We wear old clothing
because the clay stains and we will be touching it constantly for the next week.
Working in great secrecy until this moment. Town Head well pattern designer
Peter Blackwell reveals his pattern to the six or seven of us assembled together.
Incidentally, Peter had been the Town Head well designer for many years
173 A consistent level of moisture is required in the clay. Otherwise, materials impressed into the surface over the next seven days may either fall out (clay too wet) or dry and discolor or crack (clay too dry).
218 straight, and he'd only recently announced with some sadness that for personal reasons undisclosed the 1997 well would be his last design.
Derbyshire weUs-dressing tradition is a friendly yet competitive form of expression. Because the weUs-dressing tradition is believed to have originated in pagan rituals of thanks for the plentiful springs in the area, it has become traditional—but not completely without exception—to use obvious biblical themes in the design concepts. It is considered somewhat risky and avant garde to use completely secular or abstract designs with no clear religious allusions; but for the risk, it is also agreed that the more radical designs have the potential to be more artistically rewarding. Peter Blackwell, in his final design after 25 straight years, chose to push the liberal license to the extreme. His design depicted cherubs riding rainbow slides and other images of sheer silliness drawn from music, science, Greek mythology, and even local lore. Peter looked at this as his swan song and decided to take a risk, and the general consensus as word spread through the village was that Peter is a gifted designer and was entitled to take artistic freedom in his last design.
We all agreed that we were tickled by the design and admired the artwork itself.
Next we laid the design (drawn on paper the exact size of the complete clay- fUled frame) on the clay and secured it in place with tape. Now it was time to transfer the design to the damp clay surface by taking a small nail or large pin and pricking through the paper and into the clay along every fine in the template at intervals of approximately 1/5 to 1/8 of an inch. Called "pricking out," this process took nearly one full day, always under Peter's doting and fastidious care for precision and teamwork.
219 O nce pricking out was complete, it was time to make some practical and
aesthetic decisions. Every square inch of space on the well would eventually be
covered over by a fresh flower petal, a fragment of a living thing. The following
six days are spent placing organic elements on the well, one flower petal at a
time, even one grain of rice at a time (using tweezers) until Peter is satisfied with
the look.
When the well is done, it is covered to retain moisture and early on blessing day
moved by the same laboring men to the well display site and placed secure and
upright for public display. After a grand and very large procession through
town, some hymns and prayers, and a few words from the designer, the well is
officially blessed and available for admiration. After that moment, there is no
more work done and the well is left to fall apart and, in a sense, die of natural
causes.
Because I was invited and made to feel welcome, 1 became a member of the appreciated core group of ten or so workers who put in regular, back-breaking hours bent over the well frame from morning until late at night each day. Other villagers came and went, but they did so more out of curiosity or to make a token appearance than to significantly speed the work long. As a folklorist, it was a dream come true not only to participate in the production itself but also to share the point of view on the event of a privileged insider.
I was the only nonresident invited to contribute, and I knew of no others who contributed later in the week either. My fellow weDs-dressers included Peter Blackwell, of course, Lynn (the local doctor's wife), Fran Clifford, John Maltby (a lifelong resident and descendent of plague victims), Rachel (a former Eyam resident who'd moved to
220 another city in the previous yecir), Kelly Davies (the fourteen-year-old daughter of the
garage owners), and Joanna (an eighteen-year-old who was preparing to leave for
university at the end of the summer). Of the main group, Fran Clifford was the least
"local" newcomer, not having been bom in Eyam and having lived there fewer than two
decades. By far, I was the outsider—the only visitor, the only American, the only person
never to have dressed a well—but I felt curiously at ease. I was privy to highly
interesting and informative casual conversations between friends and neighbors who
chit-chatted about village life and traditions, perhaps with awareness of my presence
but also, I believe, because the weUs-dressing was an event that simply encouraged such
discussions and nostalgia. Nozu this is participant observation, I thought.
Two days into the process, I noticed a smaU hand-lettered sign at the street
comer near the Davies's garage. It read: "WeUs-dressing in progress" and had an arrow
pointing the way. Because the entrance to the garage was around the structure and from
within the private back garden, there was a simUar hand-lettered sign nearby to ensure
that tourists didn't give up or miss the turns. I happened to arrive an hour or so later
than the others and I thought 1 sensed tension in the room. Fran, Peter, Lynn, and some
of the others were there already. I looked around and noted a new tray along one waU
containing a set of photos of the 1996 weU (priced for sale) and a tin can with a slot in
the top and a note asking for "donations." I sat down and resumed the curduous task of placing rice grains one at a time in tidy rows eight across to mark out a sUver gate and I w aited.
Not long afterward, there were some voices outside the garage door and in walked a group of three elderly women, very neatly dressed and holding handbags, quite
obviously tourists. Three men foUowed a few moments later. Conversation in the room stopped cold, but the tourists continued to talk among themselves. I foUowed the lead of the other wells-dressers and said nothing. The transformation was sudden,
221 immistakable, and well practiced: workers became silent, focused intently on their own specific areas, and never looked up to make eye contact with the visitors. Soon, the ladies and gentlemen seemed to realize that they had walked into a demonstration of sorts and began asking questions awkwardly, posing them rhetorically as though to nobody in particular ("Oh, isn't that beautiful? I wonder how long that takes? Is it all real flowers? Who designs these, I wonder?"). I noticed some of the workers exchanging furtive, significant glances at one another and guessed they were sharing some sort of irritation. Breaking the silence on the part of the workers was Fran Clifford. It was she,
I learned later, who had posted the signs outside and set up the photos for sale and donations can. Fran, working aU the while, provided a brief summary of the weUs- dressing tradition and answered questions politely. She took care to point out the photos for sale and the donations can. After the tourists were satisfied and finally left, the demeanor of the workers returned to its normal, relaxed state. This occurred on several occasions, and I soon adopted the rigid pose and uninviting demeanor of the others when tourists came in. I admitted to myself that it was annoying to have what felt like "our" private and meaningful space intruded upon by tourists, apparently encouraged by Fran Clifford but unwanted by the rest of the group. Again, 1 had sympathetically aligned myself with the locals.
Then at some point Fran left and I was truly the only outsider among the workers. We chatted as always, and 1 felt the unmistakable bonds of friendship growing between some of them and me. I did what I could to remain perfectly clear with aU of them that my purpose was to observe and document Eyam traditional community life and changes to it, and that seemed not to be a distancing factor at all. It was a very comfortable and satisfying social experience for me. And then another group of tourists arrived, popping in through the garden doorway and eventually noticing that we were all working silently without encouraging inquiry. As the silence fell and grew toward
222 awkward, Peter said to me, "Chris, you are an expert in traditions. Why don't you
answer any questions?" I was surprised but wanted to do as I was told and so
answered questions and eventually gave a brief summary of the wells-dressing tradition,
much as Fran had done on earlier occasions. In the moments or even hours that
followed, I dwelled on what I had said, troubled. Did my explanation please the workers?
Was it consistent with their beliefs? Did I offend anyone in some way? I was self-conscious
about being the spokesperson and had the desire to do well should I be forced to do it
again.
Then it finally hit me: I didn't ask to speak on behalf of the group? I didn't even want to! Yes, I study tradition but there is no way anyone present could beheve that I knew as much or more about local traditions than anyone else in the room. Why had I accepted responsibility—to fulfill a need? to balm an uncomfortable social moment? out of gratitude for the recognition as spokesperson for the local point of view?
A Second Occurrence of the Same Phenomenon
During my fieldwork stay in 1997,1 resided at an Eyam bed and breakfast run by Meirlys Lewis. There I had the opportunity to speak at length with dozens of other guests. Most of these encounters occurred at the breakfast table and lasted from 45 to
90 minutes. Over the five-week period of my visit, I was the only guest who stayed at
Delf View House for more than two nights; such a long stay by any guest was quite uncommon there. Most of my fellow guests stayed for one night, and only a small few stayed for a second. I quickly discovered that I had almost immediately become a feature of the house, made available to other guests at breakfast with great dexterity on
Meirlys's part. Before I turned in for my first night at Delf View House, Meirlys asked if
I might like to eat breakfast and chat with the other guests in the morning. As genuinely eager as I was to oblige, it was perfectly clear to me that I had not really been asked a
223 question. I appeared at my appointed time as did the other guests. We were introduced
and then left alone together at the table while Meirlys prepared our tea and English
breakfast. Small talk and introductions inevitably developed over the long meal into
more substantive discussions about many different matters: travel, nationality and
culture, family, education, politics, television, food, and—almost always—Eyam. As
the resident expert—Meirlys knew I was conducting research on the village and played
that hand deftly—I again unwittingly became a representative of Eyam. This scene was
played out on every morning of my visit except one when I was the only guest for a
night.
Despite my training and self-assured advocacy for what I thought was the local position, I had become the usurping newcomer and assumed the position of
representative and authority. It was very strange to me and I puzzled over it for the rest
of my stay in Eyam and still grapple with it today.
"I find my position already occupied; a version of 'myself' has already been pre inscribed into the site."
(Dorst 204)
In his 1959 book entitled The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Erving Coffman explores ways in which groups of people represent themselves differently for themselves
and others. He uses an acting metaphor and positions one's "front" stage as that presentation that is deemed acceptable publically and one's "back" stage as the more intimate, perhaps authentic cultural self. Today, we are not as interested in assessing
authenticity as Coffman may have been, but the notion of differential self-representation is valuable for drawing a conclusion concerning who speaks for Eyam and why. He
224 says, "when an individual enters the presence of others, they seek to acquire information
about that individual or to bring into play information about him already possessed."
He lists things hke socio-economic status, self conception, attitude, competence and
trustworthiness. This information about the individual "helps to define the situation, enabling others to know in advance what he will expect of them and luhat they may expect of him" (emphasis added). Perhaps this apphes to the newcomer in Eyam. Coffman continues:
When an actor takes on an established social role, usually he finds that a particular front has already been established for it. Whether his acquisition of the role was primarily motivated by a desire to perform the given task or by a desire to maintain the corresponding front, the actor will find that he must do both. Further, if the individual takes on a task that is not only new to him but also unestabHshed in the society, or if he attempts to change the Hght in which his task is viewed, he is likely to find that there are already several well-established fironts among which he must choose. Thus, when a task is given a new front we seldom find that the front it is given is itself new. Since fronts tend to be selected, not created, we may expect trouble to arise when those who perform a given task are forced to select a suitable front for themselves from among several quite dissimilar ones. (27-28)
Galal Walker and Eric Shepherd, writing about cultural immersion experiences of
American students visiting China, observe that "foreigners in a second culture, especially a very ahen culture, have a role, foreigner, that affects their movement within the culture; sometimes hindering it, sometimes facQitating it. This is evidence that suggests that who a person is in another culture is, at least in part, determined by the culture"
(forthcoming).
This, I beheve, is what has been happening in Eyam and what I experienced firsthand. It is an involuntary process since it is not the newcomer who determines the role locals cast him or her into. I suggest that there are several categories ofNewcomers, perhaps resembling at least the following (and certainly worth considerable theorizing in the future): Tourist, New Resident, and New Resident Enthusiast. Tourists are
225 dismissed by most residents, invisible for their sheer steady presence on the village
streets. New Residents move into the community and are defined by their actions and
attitudes as well as the perceptions of those interacting with them the most. New
Resident Enthusiast, however, may be a specific pre-existing category which a newcomer
may fit into and then unwittingly assume when agreeably conferred upon him or her by
locals. The quirk of this category is that it nearly binds the New Resident Enthusiast
into a position of representative authority, whether it is as spokesperson for wells-
dressing workers, breakfast raconteur, village tour guide, local historian and lecturer, museum docent, or perhaps even manor and craft mall owner. It is difficult to demonize
these representatives just because I personally disapprove of some of their choices, especially when I learned firsthand that a newcomer can easily and rapidly be placed into position of authority and have to make representational choices on the spot.
"They Are Determined That Its Character Shall Not Be Destroyed"
I began this dissertation with the statement quoted above, for it has long resonated with issues, perspectives, sympathies, and causes that make Eyam's predicament so interesting to me. John Clifford and Reverend David Shaw both spoke this phrase to me, each in his own way, but each making a definite point about what
Eyam is and to what extent community and idea figure into the definition. John Clifford was deeply troubled and impassioned in his hopes that Eyam would not become simply a "tourist village" hke Castleton nearby. By this he means a village that offers every amenity and gimmick for tourists but which has nothing for locals: no bread, no milk, no community (personal interview; 1997). When David Shaw said that the villagers "are determined that Eyam's character shall not be destroyed" (personal interview 1992), I took this to mean what is perhaps obvious: Eyam is and will remain "the plague village," with landscape and other symbols preserved to evoke specific memories that
226 conform to Peak District and more general national cultural expectations. Certainly this
is true for some tourists and Eyam villagers alike, and 1 believe that I was not exactly
wrong in begiiming with this assumption. But after considerable further reflection, I have
discovered that it is not zohether or not Eyam shall change that is contested but rather it is
what defines the essential quality of Eyam that is at stake. I believe that essential quality is
what is meant in the phrase "They are determined that its character shall not be
destroyed." What is Eyam reallyl Is it a complex, imagined, socially constituted and
reflexive sense of community? Is it a collection of sites that hint at and articulate key
elements of an appealing plague story? Is Eyam an aestheticized and politically
constituted list of most valued characteristics that favor pastoral sensibilities and
tourist activities? These questions are exactly the problem for Eyam. It all depends on
one's perspective, and therein is shaped the perceived essential quality of Eyam that shall
not be destroyed. Ultimately, it is not the site, not the structures, not the landscape, not
the narrative, and not the experience of local or tourist that is to be preserved: it is the
imagined essence of Eyam itself that is contested. In Eyam, the Locals' predicament might be simply that they (and their perspectives) are outnumbered and have not the relative might to be heard in a system that imagines the site but does not recognize community.
I have come full circle. I now believe that in this contest it is the Hkes of the Peak
Park Planning Authority, local historians such as John Clifford, tour guides, Eyam Hall
Manor managers, parish church volunteers such as D., and even the museum caretakers who will lose the contest of determination. These are the groups and voices for Eyam that resist change by denying its inevitability in some way. They fix narrative in print and jealously guard its integrity against external assaults. They concoct a ridiculously thin veneer of bland and vague historicity in order to satisfy tourists who tour the manor and spend money at the Craft Centre. They resist the influences of change by elevating
227 the struggle to the level of the spiritual. They write and enforce guidelines that prescribe an essentially hollow rendering of characteristics that can be valued only by visitors and only for a hmited amount of time. Anything more would require all of these voices to understand that there are living communities involved and to accept that change cannot be avoided and that attempts to restrict change are Ukely to fail if they do not take their cues from the communities themselves.
Perhaps Eyam's narrative ultimately fimctions "for the inscription of locality onto bodies," and in this case the body is the physical expression of Eyam over which the contest appears to be waged. This is why the Cliffords and other local enthusiasts are so intent on preserving and validating the Eyam narrative. Locality is central to the sense of community, to "social immediacy." It is the key to Eyam's locality, in A qun
Appadurai's sense.^^'* Eyam's historically derived distinctiveness is conceptualized first in narrative and then in landscape forms, with the village's actual present-day residents existing almost entirely outside of the process. The ritual process of arriving in Eyzun and submitting to classification as Tourist, New Resident, or New Resident Enthusiast,
Appadurai might say, performs the inscriptive process that designates one's belonging to a conceptual locality. That explains the 30-year rule. One may be inscribed as an
Eyamer in only two ways: by birth into a local household or by dwelling in the village for three decades and more. Otherwise, the Newcomer is inscribed into a position designed ultimately to distance him or her firom the living, intimate core of the community where the reality of change occurs beneath the longing for stability. Perhaps the specific idea or moment of Eyam that is being struggled over is really an ethnoscape, a replacement for what Appadurai considers to be the outdated belief that group identities are defined in spatial, historical, or ethnic terms (33-34); an ethnoscape, on the
174 A ijun A ppadurai, 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, pp. 178-205.
228 other hand, defines group identity in phenomenological (conceptual) terms without the heretofore accepted constraints. It is precisely the ethnoscape Eyam that is at risk and whose loss is lamented by some. The built and natural environment that constitutes the
Eyam site will prevail, guided or misguided by codes and laws. Community wül exist as well so long as there are dweUings in proximity, which generates neighborhood and some sort of community—not the same sort as 100, 20, or even 10 years ago, but a community of a new sort in any case.
229 CHAPTER 7
CONCLUSION
I complete this dissertation, concerning unstoppable tourist flow and organized
government enconragement in a year when the entire U.K. and parts of Europe are hit
very hard by another biological crisis. The current outbreak of foot and mouth disease
attacks domestic livestock such as cattle and sheep w ith amazing virulence^ and the
English government has had to struggle mightily in order to manage the crisis. Not
surprisingly (after this study of plague, tourism, planning, and cultural expectations is nearly closed), the crisis is much more than just a medical epidemic of staggering proportions and increasing potential devastation. The crisis is diplomatic in that
European markets almost immediately killed the importation of English beef and
threatened to broaden the embargo to include many other agricultural products. It is an economic crisis with entire farm herds being slaughtered for fear of infection, with the national government paying enormous and unexpected subsidies in partial compensation, and with the tourism industry staunched as a result of fears and emergency protection policies.
In chapter five I describe the cultural demand for the general public's "right to roam" the English countryside. This right to roam provides a major component of tourism in England. Foreigners and the English themselves crisscross parks and scenic areas on foot (including active farms and pastures) as a way to enjoy the natural and built environments. Government agencies, however, had to terminate roaming privileges
230 indefinitely and without notice as a precaution against spreading the foot and mouth
disease. Major news outlets here in the U.S. have reported that there was no measurable
opposition to the roaming restrictions. This is very good news, of course, because a
threat to the national economy, culture, and self-image could be devastating. People can
suppress their otherwise outspoken personal interests in favor of the pubfic good. It is a
pity, however, that this same sober perspective and visceral acknowledgement of the
serious nature of crisis cannot be automatic in smaller local contexts as well. I suspect
that the way any crisis is defined has almost everything to do with how seriously the
larger population takes it. One small, remote communit}'^ undergoing economic change,
gentrification, suburbanization, or conversion into a tourist community is not going to
raise the hairs on the back of the necks of too many outsiders.
One of the reasons I was so excited to begin fieldwork in Eyam was that it offered me what I felt was the ideal set of challenges and satisfactions that a folklorist could hope for. It is an interesting topic that involves complex issues that face communities in many parts of the world, so it is relevant. But the study of a historical community that is defined in narrative, landscape, local tradition, the heritage industry, and even public policy offers even more, things that most folklorists love to do. In Eyam
I had something to take pictures of, real people to meet and enjoy, symbolic relations to puzzle out, and interview recordings to transcribe and revisit from time to time. These are skills I was taught to develop or had innately in the first place, and it was terrific to have a singular object of study that required all of them. I felt Hke a folklorist.
Now as I enjoy the moment of writing these words in conclusion to my dissertation, I have to say that I feel even more Hke a folklorist, and that includes not
231 knowing all of the answers. I look forward to addressing many of the issues I raised herein again as I continue to define myself as a folklorist teacher and scholar. The village
of Eyam is more exciting and fascinating to me than it was in 1992 or even when I lived
there briefly in 1997. For one thing, I believe that my understanding of exactly what we can lezim through Eyam's experience is clearer. I have a long mental list of things I will do differently next time I visit with field research in mind. For example, I may not burden myself with quite so many blank cassettes; I know now that if my fieldwork were
to consist of 8-10 tape recorded interviews per day, I would probably miss more importcint things that reveal themselves only in the relative quiet of spontaneous, everyday interactions. Some of the changes I would make owe not to miscalculation but to the fact that I now know the specific terms of the Eyam case study much more directly. I know that LosehiU Hall is where I can find the Peak Park's specialists in environmental conservation and outreach. I know that the BakeweU office of the Peak
Park is where the group of policy writers who produced the Structure Plan and Local
Structure Plan operate. I will most certainly include such offices and their representatives in my field research in the future. There are a lot of things that I know better now and am eager to put to use again in my continued study of Eyam.
There are still other things that I am proud of and would not only do again but have already found myself advocating when I speak of foUdoristic work to others. For example, a folklorist entering the field is a tourist. It doesn't matter that the folklorist might view the field—and the subject of tourism itself—with scholarly purpose. The folklorist is still a tourist, a visitor, an intruder perhaps, and a consumer of what is offered under terms negotiated by the local groups, the visitor, and any other mitigating forces (such as planning organizations). Recognizing that I was a tourist, I was free to experience the Eyam site as a tourist during my first few days in the village. It was interesting, provided essential information for the study, localized me, and gave me a bit
232 of humbling perspective because I liked what I saw of Eyam even as it was presented to
me as a tourist. In essence, by trying not to hold myself aloof from people and processes
which I find problematic in an intellectual way, I was able to recognize a truth inherent in
the Eyam complex today: a great many people work very hard and take what they do
very seriously in their own interactions with, uses of, or protections of what they find
meaningful in Eyam. For example, the Peak Park Planning Authority's guidelines and
restrictions are unbelievably strict, troublesome in themselves for many Eyam locals but
unnecessarily so in my educated opinion because the policies are not built to
accommodate the local community adequately. Nevertheless, this must come down to a
critique of the system (in which national culture and priorities figures along with strict
rules and regulations) and not a rank condemnation of those who carry it out to their best abilities. The system is flawed; the practitioners are good; there is hope.
Another important revelation for me was that in tossing aside my hoard of blank cassettes and the grid of open slots available for tape recorded interviews, 1 made myself available as an acquaintance for people in Eyam. Time spent dressing the Town
Head well, throwing darts (badly) with the Lowe family, savoring dinner with the
Cliffords, or watching the Carnival parade from a wall-top with friends and strangers could easily have been spent in one-on-one interviews, but I would have missed out on what I believe was the most important insight of my entire study: that newcomers are not unilaterally demonized but rather that they are placed into categories—even categories of apparent representational power—that have been created for them by the locals. But even more important than that insight, I would have failed to develop some of the most meaningful and enjoyable friendships I have ever had the pleasure to make.
Although I am tempted from time to time to assess this foUdoristically (and probably will some day), I think I just want to keep enjoying it for a while as it is. Although I was a visitor, not a tourist yet not situated enough to be a real newcomer, my contacts there
233 quickly became acquaintances and many became genuine friends. Their warmth and generosity of spirit and time truly amaze me. As eager as I am to share this finished dissertation with my family and close friends here in the U.S., I am at least that excited to notify my friends in Eyam that I have finished too. I suspect they will be happy for me, but they will probably ultimately be more interested in what I have to share about what's new in my life, where I'm moving, what I'll be doing, what children we now have, when we're all coming to Eyam, and so forth.
So although this is my dissertation's conclusion, it feels to me like a small chapter in what I hope will be an enduring and happy relationship with people in Eyam.
Perhaps they will not all remain in Eyam. In fact, some have already moved away. Still others remain and I am in contact with as many as possible, regardless of where they are. I began this study with an implicit suspicion of tourists and newcomers in Eyam, not caring for the kinds of changes 1 believed they were wreaking in the village. I leave this contemplation with a new understanding of my own—which still has to be further developed—but with a new appreciation for the fact that communities must change and such change is often invited, originates from, or is made necessary by locals too. Eyam wül remain where it is, and the tourist me will probably find it close to exactly as it is now in fifty years. The folklorist me will find evidence of deeper, continuing change—neither bad nor good in absolute terms, but interesting, useful, or even distressing in other terms. The whole me will have to be pragmatic about community and change.
1 hear from Meirlys Lewis that a national supermarket has opened a store in
Eyam and that the local green grocer Nancy's Stores has gone out of business. Meirlys offers no explicit comment to reveal her feelings other than the fact that she mentioned it to me. I believe, like I, she will miss Nancy's stores but she will end up doing a lot of her grocery shopping at the new superrrvcurket anyw ay.
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