The village of Eyam

Imagine……… walking down the street and crossing the road to avoid having to talk to a friend……. declining a friend’s invitation to enter her house…... feeling angry and trapped that you cannot travel away from your home…. 

Are such feelings familiar to you during the coronavirus crisis?  Maybe they are – but I am not talking about experiences in the twenty-first century – I am thinking about what the inhabitants of a small village called Eyam might have felt during 1665–66 when plague struck their village and they decided to isolate themselves from their neighbours...