From the Time Travellers Guide to Eckington

Scroll down the page until you find the information you need. You will find more information about this place in the Time Traveller's Guide on the heritage detective's website.

You have found Eckington Bridge.  This bridge has six arches and is made of stone. It is not very wide so the traffic that passes over it today has to be controlled by traffic lights.

Information for Arthur.

Eckington people need to cross the river Avon if they want to go to Pershore. Long long ago all the land around here belonged to Pershore Abbey but old records kept in the library at Westminster Abbey indicate that Eckington land belonged to them. The Abbot’s tenants had to attend the Manor Court at Binholme and the Hundred Court at Great Calcroft, both were in the area we know today as Pershore.  They needed a safe way to cross the river especially if they were taking their goods to the market in Pershore. Perhaps there was there a ford or a ferry boat. We know a bridge was built in 1440 and that it was replaced by the current bridge in 1722.

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You have found Holy Trinity Church, Eckington.  It is made of stone and parts of it look very old. 

Information for Arthur.

You have discovered that Arthur will recognise parts of this church.  If he takes a walk all around the outside of this building he will find some small 12th century windows with round arches, he is sure to recognise them.  He might also recognise the larger, lancet shaped windows. In the early 13th century many churches were going through their first make-over and the tiny round headed windows which let in very little light were being replaced by larger windows with pointed arches. Arthur should go inside and see what else he will find that is familiar to him.

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You have found the village cross. The shaft looks very old and you can see a join where a new cross head was put on.

Information for Arthur.

You have discovered that the shaft is probably medieval but it may even be Saxon! The original cross was probably destroyed at the Reformation, it was replaced in the 19th century.  Tell Arthur you know that people in medieval England were very religious and they really believed in the devil and hell and that you understand that they built crosses for protection and to mark special places - a market place or a boundary, or open air preaching places.  But tell him that you are not sure when this one was made.

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You have found an old timber frame.

Information for Arthur.

Timber frames like this one seem rather remarkable to us today, most of our houses are made with bricks but we understand that bricks were rare around here in Arthur's time. This must mean that Arthur will be familiar with timber framed houses.  In Eckington there are quite a lot of houses made with timber frames.  This one seems to be ready for the builder to start filling the panels between the timbers. We are not sure whether he will use woven wattle strips and then plaster them over with daub or whether he will he use bricks.

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You have found two of the oldest houses in Eckington. One was built in the 1500s.

Information for Arthur

There was a housing boom in the late 16th and early 17th century and many of the timber framed houses we can see in Eckington today were built at those times.  One of these houses was built in the late 16th century and the other in the early 17th century.  These were prosperous and peaceful times when many new houses were built.  Look carefully at the timber framed houses you can see in this village. Some are sitting on stone foundations, the stone is local and comes from Bredon Hill. Many houses built in medieval times did not last very long. In old deserted villages, among the humps and bumps in the ground, you can sometimes see the platforms on which the houses had once stood. There are several deserted settlements around here, one is up on Bredon Hill near Wollas Hall.

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You have found a railway line.

Information for Arthur.

The railway came to Eckington in the 1840s, it linked Birmingham to Bristol. In those days the trains stopped here at Eckington station.  You can still see the bridge over the railway lines but you will have to imagine the platforms and all the hustle and bustle as the trains were loaded with baskets of local fruit and vegetables. The train meant that they could be transported quickly to the new markets in more industrial areas.  Every afternoon, in the street outside the station. the horses and carts would have to wait while local farmers chatted away with their neighbours sharing the news and local gossip. This was a prosperous time for Eckington.

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You have found a memorial to a soldier who died just after the end of the first world war.

Information for Arthur

This churchyard contains memorials to the loved ones of generations of people who have lived in Eckington. There are also memorials to people who have died fighting for their country. You can see one beside the village cross, another inside the church and there is a third is in the school.  Arthur would be familiar with the idea of a memorials. In The Seeing Stone he tells us how he selected the words to go on the memorial for his baby brother Luke.

Does this information help Arthur?

Information from the Heritage Knights

The heritage detectives of Eckington First School are sure that Arthur will find lots to interest him here in Eckington. When they started to collect information for the Time Traveller’s Guide they discovered that Eckington has a history that goes back before Roman times!

We all think that this story will be really interesting to Arthur.   In Saxon times all the land in Eckington belonged to the monks of Pershore Abbey. They owned vast areas of land and it made them very rich and powerful. The trouble was that some people were very jealous and these were turbulent times, it was difficult for the monks to keep control of all of their land, in fact they lost about two-thirds of it.   A lot of it ended up in the control of the powerful  Earl of Mercia but when he died the King took it back into his control. (This was not unusual in those days because the King considered he owned all the land and he could do what he wanted with it.)  The monks at Pershore Abbey must have hoped the King would return the land to them  but this was not to be.  King Edward the Confessor, who was King at the time, was in the process of making sure that the church he had chosen as his burial place would always be richly decorated and beautiful, candles would burn at his tomb and masses would be said for his soul. This would all be very expensive and he had to make sure that the monastery he had chosen for the job would be able to pay for it all; they would need land because land gave wealth.  Which monastery had he chosen for this job? Where was the church?  Well, the church was the Abbey Church of St Peter in Westminster. 

The Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey are still patrons of Holy Trinity Church and the Vicars of Eckington are still appointed by the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey.