Lockdown. It felt like a new word when Boris Johnson used it on 23 March 2020. But the idea behind it — isolating communities to stop the spread of disease — is as old as civilisation itself.
Long before stay-at-home orders, furlough schemes and daily briefings, governments, church leaders and ordinary people made the same calculation: restrict movement now, or watch disease spread unchecked. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t. But the instinct to lock down has driven some of the most remarkable moments in human history.
Here’s the story.
The Ancient World: Isolation Before It Had a Name
The concept of separating the sick from the healthy predates written law. The Old Testament’s Book of Leviticus contains detailed instructions on isolating people with leprosy from the wider community — one of the earliest recorded examples of what we’d now call quarantine.
In 541 AD, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian faced a catastrophic plague outbreak sweeping from North Africa into Constantinople. His response was to impose isolation for both travellers and food arriving from affected regions — an early cordon sanitaire that showed rulers had already grasped the link between movement and contagion.
These were blunt tools, born of desperation rather than scientific understanding. But the logic was sound.
The Black Death and the Birth of Quarantine: 14th Century
The bubonic plague changed everything.
When it swept through Europe in the 1340s and 1350s, killing somewhere between a third and half the continent’s population, medieval authorities were forced to develop a more systematic response. It was from this catastrophe that the formal practice of quarantine was born.
The word itself comes from the Italian quarantino — a 40-day isolation period. In 1377, the city of Dubrovnik (then known as Ragusa, in modern-day Croatia) issued one of the first official quarantine ordinances in history. Anyone arriving from plague-affected cities was required to isolate in a nearby town before entering. The 40-day period was thought to be sufficient to reveal whether a traveller was carrying the disease.
Venice adopted similar measures when plague arrived in 1575. According to historical accounts, the city was effectively sealed off and half its population isolated. As we’ve seen in every epidemic since, the burden fell hardest on the poor — wealthy citizens fled, leaving the most vulnerable behind in crowded, unsanitary conditions.
Over time, the system grew more sophisticated. Quarantine stations were established on isolated islands. Infected individuals were moved to buildings called lazarettos — plague hospitals kept well away from the general population. Ships arriving at port were held at anchor and inspected before anyone was allowed ashore.
The framework developed in 14th-century Italy remained the foundation of pandemic response for the next 600 years.
Eyam: The Village That Chose Lockdown
Of all the stories in the history of lockdowns, none is more remarkable than the village of Eyam in Derbyshire.
In September 1665, the bubonic plague arrived in Eyam in a parcel of infected cloth sent from London to the village tailor. His assistant, George Viccars, hung the cloth near the hearth to dry. He was dead within days. Eyam’s first victim.
As the plague spread through the village, the newly appointed rector, William Mompesson, faced an impossible choice. Villagers were preparing to flee — and if they did, they risked carrying the plague into surrounding towns and cities.
On 24 June 1666, Mompesson gathered the villagers together. He proposed that Eyam quarantine itself completely. Nobody in. Nobody out. He promised to stay with them — knowing it might cost him his life.
Despite understanding what they were agreeing to, the villagers said yes.
A stone boundary was set around the village. The Earl of Devonshire arranged for food and supplies to be left at collection points on the perimeter. Payment was left in water or vinegar to reduce the risk of spreading infection through coins. Church services were moved outdoors to avoid people crowding together in an enclosed space.
The quarantine lasted 14 months. By the time it ended, around 260 people had died — roughly three-quarters of those who had remained in the village. Whole families were wiped out. One woman, Elizabeth Hancock, buried her husband and six children within a single week, alone, because plague rules prevented anyone from helping her.
But the plague did not spread to the surrounding communities.
Eyam remains one of the most extraordinary examples of collective sacrifice in British history. Centuries before anyone understood viruses or infection routes, a small Derbyshire village understood that containing a disease sometimes means choosing to stay inside it.
The Spanish Flu: The Pandemic That Changed the Playbook
The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed somewhere between 50 and 100 million people worldwide — more than died in the First World War that preceded it.
Governments across the world scrambled to respond. Maritime quarantines were imposed on islands including Australia, Iceland and American Samoa. Schools, theatres, churches and places of worship were closed. Public gatherings were banned. Social distancing, in practice if not by name, became policy.
Some cities acted quickly and decisively. Others didn’t. The research that followed the pandemic found a clear pattern: cities that implemented restrictions early, and used a combination of measures together rather than one in isolation, fared significantly better than those that delayed or did too little.
The lesson from 1918 — that early action using multiple non-pharmaceutical measures is more effective than any single intervention — has been confirmed repeatedly in the century since.
SARS, Ebola and the 21st Century: Rehearsals for COVID
The century between the Spanish flu and COVID-19 wasn’t short of outbreaks. SARS in 2003, H1N1 swine flu in 2009, Ebola in 2014-2016 — each triggered quarantine measures of varying scale and effectiveness.
SARS in particular prompted China and neighbouring countries to introduce aggressive travel restrictions and isolation protocols. It was contained relatively quickly, partly because it was less transmissible than COVID-19, but also because of early, coordinated action.
These outbreaks served as warnings — and, for those paying attention, as rehearsals. Emergency planners, public health officials and preparedness researchers used each one to refine plans, stockpile equipment and update guidance.
Not everyone was listening. When COVID-19 arrived, many governments found themselves scrambling.
COVID-19: The Lockdown That Changed the Modern World
On 23 March 2020, at 8:30pm, Boris Johnson addressed the nation and announced the UK’s first national stay-at-home order. Schools, non-essential shops, gyms, pubs and restaurants were closed. People were told they could leave their homes only for essential shopping, medical needs, daily exercise or essential work. The measures became legally enforceable on 26 March.
The announcement came with a promise: three weeks to flatten the curve.
It lasted much longer than three weeks. The UK experienced a total of three national lockdowns between March 2020 and the spring of 2021, with additional tiered and regional restrictions in between. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland followed their own devolved timelines.
The economic and social cost was enormous. Businesses failed. Mental health services were overwhelmed. Children lost schooling that many have never fully recovered. And for millions of people, the pandemic became something deeply personal — lost jobs, lost relationships, and in too many cases, lost loved ones.
The pandemic also exposed every inequality that already existed in society. Those in cramped housing fared worse than those with gardens. Those in low-paid, public-facing work couldn’t work from home. The elderly and the clinically vulnerable bore a disproportionate share of the death toll.
This is not new. It happened in 14th-century Venice. It happened in 17th-century Eyam. Epidemics have always hit hardest where people are most vulnerable, most crowded, and have the least power to protect themselves.
What the History of Lockdowns Actually Teaches Us
Whether it’s medieval Italy, a Derbyshire village in 1666, or the entire United Kingdom in 2020, the lessons of lockdown history are remarkably consistent.
Early action matters more than almost anything else. The communities and countries that acted quickly — even imperfectly — consistently fared better than those that hesitated.
No single measure is enough. Quarantine alone, or closing schools alone, or masks alone — none of it works in isolation. Effective pandemic response has always combined multiple measures at once.
The vulnerable always bear the greatest burden. Without active support structures, the people who struggle most during a lockdown are those who were already struggling before it started.
Ordinary people are capable of extraordinary things. The villagers of Eyam didn’t have government mandates or enforcement. They chose to stay. That choice cost most of them their lives. But it may have saved thousands of others.
And perhaps most importantly: this will happen again. It has always happened again.
Are You Ready?
The history of lockdowns is also a history of people caught unprepared — scrambling for supplies, unsure what to do, waiting for instructions that sometimes came too late.
You don’t have to be one of them.
Preparing for Lockdown exists to help you get ahead of whatever comes next — whether that’s a disease outbreak, an infrastructure failure or any other disruption that might force you to stay home at short notice.
Take a look around the site, and start building your preparedness one step at a time. You don’t need to do everything at once. You just need to start. Get The Book – Preparing for Lockdown