James Eccles

James Eccles FGS (1838 – 6 June 1915) was an English mountaineer and geologist who is noted for making a number of first ascents in the Alps during the silver age of alpinism.

Eccles was born in Blackburn in 1838, the eldest son of Edward Eccles of Liverpool.

He was on the board of Blackburn School, and a minute recording a donation of his to the Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery styles him as "James Eccles, JP" He was elected a member of the Manchester Geological Society in 1866, becoming a vice-president in 1872. He was a Fellow of the Geological Society from 1867 to 1915.

Eccles married in 1863 and moved to London by 1874, where he lived at 15, Durham Villas, Fillimore Gardens, Kensington. A notice in the London Gazette states that on 2 November 1874 Eccles, together with John William Eccles and Robert Langley Wilson, presented a petition to the Lord Chancellor for the winding up of the British Timber Company. He died in 1915, leaving £163,334 in his will.

Eccles began climbing in the Alps in the 1860s and made an early ascent of the Matterhorn on 20 July 1869 from the Breuil side, employing J. A. Carrel and Bich as guides, together with two Chamoniards with whom he would subsequently often climb – the Payot brothers, Alphonse and Michel. Alpine historian C. Douglas Milner called Eccles a climber of "exceptional calibre" and his guides the Payot brothers as "the finest that Chamonix could provide at that time". Eccles had a special interest in the mountains of the Mont Blanc massif – Dumler calls him "that assiduous Mont Blanc explorer" – and made the first ascent of the Aiguille du Plan in July 1871 with Alphonse and Michel Payot. This party also made the first ascent of the Aiguille de Rochefort in 1873 and the Dôme de Rochefort in 1881, the latter via its north-west face.

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