July 7th-9th

Wednesday was definitely an interesting day for us. We woke up early and traveled as a class to Eyam, a small town located around many hills and mountains. This was the town that was devastated by the Plaque in 1666, and lost almost all of its residents. We toured the local museum once we arrived, and then walked around to see some of the houses that are still standing that once were occupied by plaque victims. After that, we went to the church and cemetery where many of the victims were buried.

Some of us wanted to go and find the Boundary Stone…this was the marker where neighboring towns would drop off food and medical supplies to Eyam during the Plaque because Eyam was blocked off from any outside interaction. According to our Professor, the walk should only take 20 minutes to find the stone. How little did we know…

2 hours later and after crossing five sheep fields, we still had not found the stone. It was raining pretty well and super windy. We finally decided to give up and turn around. Let’s just say it was not a pretty site when we finally made it back down. We finally made it back to our apartments at 9pm that night. Such a long day…

Oh! I forgot to mention, we stopped by platform 9 3/4 from the Harry Potter books!

One of the plaque homes:

On Thursday we went to the Gordon Pathology Museum. This has so far been my favorite museum to go to. There were three levels to this, and each was separated into four sections. Each section was then broken down into body parts or disease, and the walls were lined with organs, body parts, anything you could really think of. There was one section on abortion that really struck me…there were actual fetuses preserved and it was so sad to look at.

Friday was a short day…we went to St. Thomas’ Hospital, which is considered one of the oldest hospitals in the world. It was neat to see, but so much has been renovated and moved around that you really didn’t get the feeling of it like we expected. We then went to the Old Operating Theatre. This is one of the first “surgical settings” in the world, and much has been preserved to keep it as it was in the 1800’s. It was neat to see because at one point, the room was closed off and blocked, and shortly after World War II, someone found it, and it was in the same condition as it had been when it first started. After that Hannah, Emmalilly, Kasey and I went to see the London Bridge (which was nothing but a bridge…go figure!) and then the Tower of London. The picture below is the operating table at the theatre:

This picture below isn't the actual London Bridge...it's the Tower of London Bridge: