Eccles, Lancashire
| Eccles | |
|---|---|
 Eccles Town Hall |
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 Eccles
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| Eccles shown within Greater Manchester | |
| Population | 38,756 (2011 Census |
| OS grid reference | SJ778986 |
| • London | 165 mi (266 km) SE |
| Metropolitan borough | |
| Metropolitan county | |
| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | MANCHESTER |
| Postcode district | M30 |
| Dialling code | 0161 |
| Police | Greater Manchester |
| Fire | Greater Manchester |
| Ambulance | North West |
| EU Parliament | North West England |
| UK Parliament | |
Eccles (/ˈɛkəlz/; pop. 38,756(2011)) is a town in Greater Manchester, England, 2.7 miles (4.3 km) west of Salford and 3.7 miles (6.0 km) west of Manchester city centre, between the M602 motorway to the north and the Manchester Ship Canal to the south.
Historically part of Lancashire, Eccles grew up around the 13th-century Parish Church of St Mary. Evidence of pre-historic human settlement has been discovered locally but the area was predominantly agricultural until the Industrial Revolution, when a textile industry was established in the town. The arrival of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the world's first passenger railway, led to the town's expansion along the route of the track linking those two cities.
Eccles cakes, first produced and sold in the town in 1793, are now exported across the world.
The derivation of the name is uncertain, but several ideas have been proposed. One is that the "Eccles" place-name is derived from the Romano-British Ecles or Eglys, itself derived from the Ancient Greek Ecclesia. Following the arrival in AD 613 of the invading Anglo-Saxons at Lancashire, many existing British place-names, especially rivers and hills (the River Irwell for example), survived intact. The root "Ecles", found in several village names, is an exception to this. A popular theory is that the word denoted the site of a building recognised by the Anglo-Saxons as a church and feature of the landscape. Eccles appears to have been such a village, and Ecles may be the likely source of the modern name. In Kenyon's "Origins of Lancashire" (1991), however, the author suggests that this may not be the case as there is not an exact correlation between "Eccles" place-names and pre-Domesday hundreds in south Lancashire.
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