Eggleston is a village in
County Durham, in
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
. The population of the
civil parish
In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...
taken at the 2011 Census was 448. It is situated in
Teesdale
Teesdale is a dale, or valley, in Northern England. The dale is in the River Tees’s drainage basin, most water flows stem from or converge into said river, including the Skerne and Leven.
Upper Teesdale, more commonly just Teesdale, falls b ...
, a few miles north-west of
Barnard Castle
Barnard Castle (, ) is a market town on the north bank of the River Tees, in County Durham, Northern England. The town is named after and built around a medieval castle ruin. The town's Bowes Museum's has an 18th-century Silver Swan automato ...
.
Etymology
The second element of ''Eggleston'' is
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...
''tün'', 'enclosure, estate, settlement'. The first element could be the
Cumbric
Cumbric was a variety of the Common Brittonic language spoken during the Early Middle Ages in the ''Hen Ogledd'' or "Old North" in what is now the counties of Westmorland, Cumberland and northern Lancashire in Northern England and the souther ...
word represented today by Welsh ''eglwys'' 'church'. However, the first element could also be from the Old Norse personal name ''Egill'' or an Anglo-Saxon personal name like ''Ecgwulf'' or ''Ecgel'', in which case the name means 'Ecgel's estate'.
Local lore notes the presence of a large stone (near
Eggleston Hall) with iron eyelets affixed. The story is that eagles to be used in
falconry, while in training, were tied to the stone with long leads. According to local knowledge the stone long ago was known as the Eagle Stone which over the centuries evolved into current place name Eggleston.
History
The village is first mentioned in tax records of 1196. The remains of ridge and furrow from the medieval period can still be seen. One of the oldest structures in the village is Eggleston Bridge, which crosses into the neighbouring village of
Romaldkirk
Romaldkirk is a village in Teesdale, in the Pennines of England. The village lies within the historic boundaries of the North Riding of Yorkshire, but has been administered by County Durham since 1974.
It is thought that the name might be deri ...
. The bridge dates to the 15th century but was mostly rebuilt in the 17th century. It originally featured a chapel at the south end. Many of the cottages date from the 18th century and were built by the
Society of Friends, who owned lead mines in the area. Forty men were employed as miners until 1904 when the company closed the smelting mills.
[http://www.explorenorthpennines.org.uk/sites/default/files/activity/downloads/enp059.pdf ]
See also
*
Egglestone Abbey
Egglestone Abbey is a ruined Premonstratensian abbey on the southern (Yorkshire) bank of the River Tees, in northern England, south-east of Barnard Castle. The abbey was historically within the North Riding of Yorkshire, but since 1974 h ...
References
External links
Villages in County Durham
{{Durham-geo-stub
