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Eckington
Eckington town centre
Population	11,152 (civil parish, 2001)
OS grid reference	SK434749
District	North East Derbyshire
Shire county	Derbyshire
Region	East Midlands
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	SHEFFIELD
Postcode district	S21
Dialling code	01246
Police	Derbyshire
Fire	Derbyshire
Ambulance	East Midlands
UK Parliament	North East Derbyshire
List of places UK England Derbyshire

Eckington is a town in North East Derbyshire, 7 miles (11 km) northeast of Chesterfield and 8.5 miles (14 km) southeast of Sheffield on the border with South Yorkshire. It lies on the B6052 and B6056 roads close to the A6135 for Sheffield and Junction 30 of the M1. It had a 2001 population of 11,152.

History

Ten Roman coins discovered in December 2008, near Eckington Cemetery may be evidence of a Roman settlement or road in the area. The oldest of the silver and copper coins is from the reign of the emperor Domitian (AD 81 to 96) while the others are from the reigns of Trajan (AD 98 to 117) and Hadrian (AD 117 to 138).

Eckington is recorded in the Domesday Book in 1086 as Echintune, a manor given to Ralph Fitzhubert. Some parts of the parish church of St Peter and St Paul date to 1100.

George Sitwell, son of George and Mary was baptised in 1601 in Eckington. George's father died whilst he was a child but as an adult he acquired the freehold of land in Eckington and exploited it by mining iron ore. In 1625, he built Renishaw Hall which is now owned by Sir Reresby Sitwell's daughter, Alexandra and her family.

Sitwell exploited the minerals beneath his estate, chiefly iron and built a blast furnace at Plumbley a mile north west of Eckington in the 1630s with his mother's second husband, Henry Wigfall. In 1652 Sitwell built a furnace at Foxbrooke, close to Renishaw, which became the core of the largest ironworks in Derbyshire. Sitwell made saws at Pleasley and in 1656, installed a rolling and slitting mill at Renishaw to supply the rod iron used by numerous local nailmakers.

During the Industrial Revolution coal and iron ore were mined and local streams, such as the Moss Brook, were harnessed to provide power for factories. The Sitwells built a large foundry and ironworks. Scythes, sickles and nails were made in the town for local use and for export. The Moss Brook was dammed to provide water power at eight sites including ChapelWheel, Carlton Wheel and Fields Wheel, to grind the blades. The remains of an old forge and drift mines exist in the valley. Eckington had a coal mine in the eastern part of the town, one of the very few in the country which is still operated.

In November there was a hiring fair for servants.

Governance

Historically, Eckington was an ecclesiastical parish in the hundred of Scarsdale in Derbyshire. After 1837 it was in the Chesterfield Poor Law Union.

Geography

Eckington covers an area of 2089 acres. The geology is the coal measures containing coal and ironstone. The Chesterfield Canal and Midland Railway passed through the parish. The Moss Brook is a tributary of the River Rother.

Schools

The oldest school in Eckington is Camms CE Primary School. In 1702, Thomas Camm endowed a schoolhouse and a schoolmaster to teach 24 poor children in the parish. In 1832, Robert Harrison moved the school to a new building which cost £600, and it was moved again to its current location on Castle Hill in 1975.

Eckington School, is a large comprehensive school, attracting pupils from the surrounding areas of Killamarsh, Renishaw, Beighton, Ridgeway and Mosborough. Despite being closer to several Sheffield residential areas the admissions policy favours pupils from Derbyshire feeder schools. It is a designated specialist engineering college. Eckington Grammar School in Halfway became Derbyshire's first comprehensive school in 1957, changing its name to the Westfield School, and since 1967 has been controlled by the city of Sheffield.

Culture

Located on the border between South Yorkshire and Derbyshire, Eckington and other towns such as Killamarsh, Mosborough and Ridgeway have their own local accent, a cross between the Sheffield (as opposed to Yorkshire) and Chesterfield accents. The influence of the Sheffield accent is the more strong.

Amenities

Eckington has a swimming pool near the library, built in the 1970s as part of a town centre improvement. The town has a bus station (halt).

Eckington Woods to the west of the town forms part of the Moss Valley conservation area. They are also known as the Bluebell Wood because of the quantity of bluebells in the springtime.

Transport

Eckington bus station

Eckington bus station serves the small town of Eckington and is situated on Pinfold Street

The station has four stands each numbered from B1-4 and two rest stands,

The major companies are Stagecoach Chesterfield, Stagecoach Mansfield and TM Travel.

People

Notable people from Eckington include:

• Walter Bussey, footballer
• Herbert Henry Elvin, trade union leader
• Joseph Gales, Sr., politician and journalist
• Joseph Gales, Jr., journalist and Mayor of Washington, D.C.
• Joan Hinde, trumpeter
• George Sitwell, Ironmaster was born here in 1601
• Paul West, poet
• Zoë Baker, swimmer

Photos

• Eckington War Memorial
• St Peter & St Paul's
• Old Market Street

References

Citations

1. ^ "Neighbourhood Statistics". Office for National Statistics. Retrieved 3 January 2015.
2. Sheffield Star 13 December 2008
3. Domesday Book: A Complete Translation. London: Penguin, 2003. ISBN 0-14-143994-7 p.1340
4. who held several manors including some in Derbyshire given by the king. They included Eckington and lands in Barlborough, Whitwell, Stretton, Ashover, Ogston, Crich, Wessington, Ingleby, Wirksworth and Hathersage
5. Sales of land in Eckington to George Sitwell and Henry Wigfall, National Archives, Retrieved March 2010
6. ^ Philip Riden, ‘Sitwell, George (bap. 1601, d. 1667)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 2 March 2010
7. ^ Lewis, Samuel (1848), "Eckington St Peter and St Paul", A Topographical Dictionary of England, British History Online, pp. 138–133, retrieved 7 June 2012
8. Conserving the Moss Valley and its wildlife, Moss Valley Wildlife, retrieved 8 June 2012
9. Camms School History
10. Derbyshire schools admissions policy
11. Eckington Swimming Pool
12. Eckington Library

Bibliography

• Bowlt, Eileen. M. (1994) Ruislip Past. London: Historical Publications ISBN 0-948667-29-X

External links

• Parish council
• Inside-Eckington Website
• Eckington in the Domesday Book
• Eckington Methodist with St Luke's church

• Use dmy dates from September 2012
• Towns in Derbyshire
• Civil parishes in Derbyshire