England's Green & Pleasant Land

On Saturday, Debbie and I went on an 'Original London Walks' Tour to the Peak District. London Walks, as their name cleverly implies, do walking tours around London. Apart from being awesome value at £6, they are great because of the calibre of the guides, who are all 'qualified' and many of whom are actors or historians, so they know their stuff and how to spin a good yarn. At certain times of the year they do day trips out of London as well.

We left St Pancras (which should look amazing once the Eurostar renovations are complete) at 8:20am - knowing that Monday was a Bank Holiday so I could have a sleep-in was a comfort! Debbie & I quickly got chatting with Caralee, a very nice American who is here on a 6 month secondment with CNN. The shared interest of travel always proves to be a great ice-breaker. Our guides were Hilary and her husband David. Hilary used to teach in the Peak District and her enthusiasm for the area was very evident.

After a 2 hour train trip we got out at Chesterfield and hopped onto a coach, where we were driven through the countryside to the village of Eyam. We were very lucky, as due to the usually warm weather the bluebells were out in force. After the craziness of London it's always good for the soul to get out into the countryside, and this area of England is breathtaking. Lots of rolling hills, stone walls, picture-postcard villages, gamboling lambs. You get the picture. Bliss.

Here cometh the history lesson. The story of Eyam (pronounced eem) though not a nice one, is quite inspirational. During the 17th century the plague came to Britain, and was for the large part, mostly contained to that glorious den of iniquity, London. In September of 1665 the plague was brought to Eyam by fleas festering in a cart full of linens for the village tailor. When several people started succumbing to the disease, the village Rector William Mompesson, called the villagers to a meeting in a nearby dell that was a natural amphitheatre.

As the people of the time were all pretty clueless as to what was spreading the plague, the Rector asked the 800 villagers to make several important decisions. The first was that in order to avoid contamination or bad air, they would no longer meet in the church, but there in the dell. The second was to bury the dead not in the sacred ground of the church, but in their gardens and farms as yet another measure to avoid contamination. Such a thing was unheard of and I imagine had implications for your immortal soul back when only suicides were buried outside of the churchyard. You can still find these graves around Eyam on private property.

The third decision is the most amazing, and that was to quarantine themselves to stop the plague from spreading any further. By doing this the villagers knew that there was a good chance they would die. With the financial backing of a neighbouring aristocrat the villagers cut themselves off completely. We walked through some fields out to the boundary stone where provisions were left by the neighbouring villages, and you can still see the stone and it's holes where they would leave coins doused in vinegar as payment.

Hilary told us the story of a young girl who was in love with a man from a neighbouring village. Once a week she would sneak off to the dell to see him. They would simply stand about a field apart, and just wave at each other, to let him know that she was still alive and well. In April he turned up, and she was not there. He returned again and again, but she did not. When the quarantine was finally lifted a few months later, this young man was one of the first to enter Eyam. He found out that she and her entire family had died. Around 250, or roughly a third of the villagers died. I think that in our world where we humans do such terrible things to each other it's nice to be reminded that we are also capable of doing heroic and incredible acts of selflessness too.

On a bright note, Debbie and I had the best fish and chips we've had yet in England for lunch :- )

The reason we know so much about the plague in Eyam is interesting too. A few decades later there was a young new Rector and for some unknown reason, a baby was christened in the local pub. The Rector had a good time partying with the locals, and as a bit of a joke, was 'married' off to the pretty barmaid. Unfortunately for this chap, the Bishop found out and was furious. He told the Rector that he had made a mockery of the sancitity of marriage and had better now honour the marriage. The Rector can't have been too bothered by this as he and the barmaid went on to have 9 kids, but he was engaged to another young lady, and she was bothered! She sued him for breach of promise and won, and was therefore entitled to take all his things. To stop this, the Rector hit upon the cunning plan of moving into the church - as the baliffs couldn't take things from sacred ground - and lived there with his family for the rest of his life. As he couldn't leave the church much for fear of being arrested, he had a lot of time on his hands, and it was suggested to him that he write the history of what had happened in Eyam.

In the afternoon we headed off to Chatsworth, the ancestral home of the Duke of Devonshire (even though it's in Derbyshire...), whose resident Dowager Duchess is Deborah Mitford, perhaps one of the less controversial Mitford Girls. Even though she's in her nineties, she still sounds like a right character, and was known to serve people in the souvenir shop. Chatsworth was used as the location of Pemberly in the Keira Knightley version of Pride & Prejuidce. I kept my eyes peeled for Mr Darcy lookalikes, but they must have been away on holiday or something...

The estate is gob-smackingly awesome, with the gardens lanscaped by that genius Capability Brown. The gardens fell into disrepair over the centuries and so Joseph Paxton (called the busiest man in England) was hired to transform it. He was only a young man of 23, and his diary of his first day at Chatsworth goes something like this: "Arrived at Chatsworth at 4am, and finding no one about, immediately set out to inspect the grounds. Put the men to work at 6am. Breakfasted at 9am with the housekeeper and her niece. Fell in love with the niece and she with me. Began plans for the greenhouse. Thus ended my first morning at Chatsworth". Clearly an efficient young man!

The house is stunning and home to many priceless treasures, such as an original Rembrandt, and the coronation thrones of William and Mary. I have decided to move there, when I am not in my other home of Sandringham. As there's about 900 rooms at Chatsworth, I figure they won't notice me.