Eyam (pronounced to rhyme with "steam") is a small village situated between Sheffield and Buxton in the Peak District of Derbyshire, just north of the A623.  It is famous for the visitation of bubonic plague in 1665 and the decision made by the inhabitants to cut themselves off from the outside world to prevent the spread of the disease - a decision which resulted in success in stopping the march of the disease but at the cost of the lives of most of the villagers during the following 15 months.

Historical Archive

The revival of well dressing in Eyam began with the Festival of Britain in 1951 which encouraged the revival of many old customs.

As the village sits on the divide between the limestone and gritstone it has no real wells to speak of but instead has one of the earliest piped water supplies in the country. This was installed to feed water troughs in 1588, and it was some of these troughs which were dressed for the Festival of Britain. Nowadays three symbolic water troughs are dressed - the Townhead Well at the western end of the village behind what used to be the Royal Oak pub,  and the main, or Townend, Well and Children's Well which are displayed side by side on a hillock near the square, behind what is now the Eyam Tea rooms.

The Townend dressing is one of the largest dressed anywhere. It measures 8 feet wide by ten feet tall and is constructed from 6 component boards which are "dressed" horizontally then put together and stood vertically like a large three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. Unfortunately the boards were seriously damaged just minutes after being erected in 2003 by a car accident and it remains to be seen what can be salvaged in future.

The picture is always made entirely from natural "growing" materials such as flower petals and seeds (but not for example stone) and is constructed on a bed of damp clay.

The entire dressing takes a week to prepare - from initial preparation of the clay, trowelling onto the boards, transferring the design from paper master sheets onto the clay to the delicate petalling stages. The boards are transported though the village on the back of tractor driven trailers from the garages and sheds where they are dressed to the well sites where they are erected in full view of any passing tourist.

This is early on the Saturday morning before the last Sunday in August, at the start of the village wakes week. The dressings remain on show all that week and will gradually lose their colour and fade as the materials dry and crack. At the end of 10 days the clay is knocked out and the boards stored away until the following year, although work may already have started on a new design.