Parts of Derbyshire's Peak District can be very bleak, with high moors covered with piles of black peat, heather and a vicious wind.

But among the moors are patches of fertile lowland, which is where the little village of Iham drew its name, old English, for an island,

an island of fertility among the wastes.

And there were riches in those bleak limestone hills all around it,

if you're prepared to suffer danger and back-breaking work,

to rest the lead from its veins deep in the rock.

So Ian was a pretty and prosperous village of 700 souls,

but if you visited Eam in 1666, you would have found a weird silence.

You might see some villages on the moors above, watching down at Eam,

watching and waiting, keeping their distance.

You might have seen an estate worker from nearby big house at Chatsworth

approach the outskirts of the village, hurriedly leave a large food parcel by a well,

pick up some coins left there, soaked in strong smelling vinegar,

and leave as quickly as possible.

You might have wondered at the houses with crosses painted on their tight-shut doors,

and at the mass of freshly dug burial mounds, not in the churchyard with its Celtic cross,

but in the gardens of individual houses, because the whole village was a charnel house.

Iham was a plague village.

Eam was a plague village. Music Hello everyone and welcome back to the history of England, episode 437, The Pale Horseman.

Ian's stories are a remarkable one and you can still see memorials if you wish it.

At any time spent in Derbyshire's Peak District is time well spent, whether it's in the bleak, gritstone black peats of the north or the gentle limestone white peaks of the south. Eam sits between the two of them.

There were lots of ancient traditions that defined the year in Eam and one of them was Wakes Week,

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