Eccles, Kent

Eccles
Kent
Eccles from Blue Bell Hill
Location
Grid reference:	TQ728606
Location:	51°19’7"N, 0°28’47"E
Data
Postcode:	ME20
Local Government
Council:	Tonbridge and Malling
Parliamentary constituency:	Chatham and Aylesford

Eccles is a village in Kent, fround just north of Aylesford, within whose civil parish it has been put. The village lies in the valley of the River Medway.

There is now just one pub in Eccles, The Red Bull. The Walnut Tree was sold and demolished following the failure of Enterprise Inns to find a licensee, this site has now been developed into private houses. There is a corner shop and a large park with a skate park and children facilities.

Eccles sits between Aylesford village (1 mile away) and the nearby village of Burham (1 mile away), and more prosaically, is a mile and a half from the M20, and 3 miles from the M2 motorways.

Archaeology

Here is the site of a Roman villa, estate and pottery kiln, excavated between 1962 and 1976. The Roman estate may have replaced an Iron Age settlement, and was occupied until the end of Roman rule. The name "Eccles" may derive from the Latin word "ecclesia" meaning church, and suggests that a post-Roman Christian community existed in the village beyond the Roman withdrawal and into the Anglo-Saxon period.

A cemetery was found here with six skeletons all of whom showed injuries caused by weapons. Three had single long sword cuts to the left side of the skull. The other three had multiple injuries - one had been hit three times on the left side of the skull, another had been hit in the spine by a projectile, either an arrow or a javelin, which probably disabled him and a single sword cut to the head.

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Eccles, Kent)

References

• Detsicas, A, The Cantiaci, Sutton, Gloucester, 1987