There was little love lost between the two religious figure heads of the town – Reverend William Mompesson and Puritan Minister Thomas Stanley. They had widely differing religious viewpoints and were often at logger heads. This imminent crisis in the village brought the two together, they knew something had to be done to curb this beast and prevent its wider distribution.

The two leaders made some precautions:

Families were expected to bury their own dead, as soon after death as possible and in the earth near where they died. So rather than having an infected corpse lying about waiting for a proper Christian burial in the church in the centre of town, the plague ridden bodies were disposed of quickly and locally to avoid further infection. People were expected to engrave their own headstones too since the engraver had fallen foul of the infection.

The village stopped using the church hall for meetings and had their services outside in another ingenious attempt to stop the disease spreading.

The most striking thing that the villagers decided to do was cordon themselves off from the rest of the country. No one was to leave the village, and no one would visit. They had boundary stones around the edge of town and all within its clutches vowed in the sight of God not to cross the line. They knew that if they were to spread the plague to the larger conurbation of Sheffield and beyond that the death count would soar.

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