Places: Eccles

ECCLES

The benefice of Eccles had been granted to Stanlow (or Stanlaw) Abbey in Cheshire in the early thirteenth century, and at that time Deane was one of its chapelries. The abbey at Stanlow was situated on the banks of the River Mersey and was liable to flooding, so by the end of the thirteenth century the majority of the monks had moved to Whalley, where the Abbey became one of the most important and wealthy Cistercian houses in the country.

The monks of Whalley provided a vicar for Eccles, which became a parish in the gift of the Crown following the monastery’s dissolution in 1537. In February 1538 a lease of the rectory of Eccles ‘and the chapel of Deane, annexed to it’ was granted to John Penne, the royal barber, who had extensive estates in Hertfordshire. However, because John Penne had not paid the rent the lease was transferred to Thomas Holcroft in 1545.

It was a discharged vicarage which means that any vicar of Eccles was ‘dischardged and acquited for ever’ from payment of a tax called first-fruits on taking over the vicarage because the value of the living was under £10 per annum. Thus, although the Crown retained the rights to all the tithes and other church dues of the parish, the vicar who served the parish was not very well paid.

A plaque in the church records that in 1541 10 townships were separated off to form the parish of Deane. Following this, the parish of Eccles comprised the townships of Barton, Clifton, Pendlebury and the chapelries of Pendleton and Worsley.

The parish church building is in the later English style and although there has been a church here since Norman times, the earliest surviving parts of the present building are said to date from the thirteenth-century, including the base of the tower. Fourteenth-century elements include the arch leading into the south transept and the studded inner door of the south porch. The church may have been built on the site of an earlier chapel as part of a Celtic cross was discovered nearby. The building was comprehensively reconstructed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries but then remained virtually unchanged until the nineteenth century when it was, again, substantially restored in 1862. The tomb of Richard Brereton and his wife and son survives from the seventeenth century. The brass plates on the ends of the pews record who was entitled to sit in them.

The church, which is listed Grade 1 on the National Heritage List for England, is now surrounded by high-rise blocks and a shopping centre, and the churchyard has mostly been grassed over.

The area of the parish included part of Chat Moss, moss being the local word for a peat bog. This area was waste until drainage schemes began in the early nineteenth century, and it has now largely been reclaimed. Most of the agriculture in the parish consisted of grazing and there was little arable land until this reclamation. Coal mining had begun in the parish by the sixteenth century and the development of canals in the eighteenth century stimulated development not only of the coal industry, but also textile weaving and spinning. A war memorial in the church records employees of Eccles Spinning Company Ltd. who served in the First World War.

Eccles is a market town, now part of Salford, and has given its name to the famous Eccles cakes.

Sources:

Dom Gilbert Dolan, O.S.B., ‘Notes on the ancient religious houses of the County of Lancaster’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, volume 43 for 1891 and volume 44 for 1892. Available online:
https://www.hslc.org.uk/journal/vol-43-1891-and-vol-44-1892/

The Statutes of the Realm; volume the fourth (London, 1719, reprinted 1963). (1 Elizabeth, c. 4).

‘Eaton-Hastings – Eccleshill’, in A Topographical Dictionary of England, ed. Samuel Lewis (London, 1848), pp. 136-139. British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/topographical-dict/england/pp136-139

‘The parish of Eccles: Introduction, church and charities’, in A History of the County of Lancaster: Volume 4, ed. William Farrer and J Brownbill (London, 1911), pp. 352-362. British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lancs/vol4/pp352-362

‘Henry VIII: April 1545, 26-30’, in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 20 Part 1, January-July 1545, ed. James Gairdner and R H Brodie (London, 1905), pp. 278-329. British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/letters-papers-hen8/vol20/no1/pp278-329 (vol 20 Part 1, no 19 (9))

Historic England:
Church of St Mary (1067498)
https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1067498 National Heritage List for England