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Eaves Hall lies in northeast Lancashire in the heart of the beautiful Ribble Valley.

Local History, Clitheroe, Riddle Valley, Lancashire

The nearest town is Clitheroe, the thriving capital town of the Ribble Valley. The surrounding countryside is dotted with some 44 villages, many of which have remained unchanged for years. The village of Dunsop Bridge, some 10 miles NW of Eaves Hall is recognized as the geographic centre of Great Britain, thus Eaves Hall truly stands in the centre of the Kingdom.

In Roman times there was an important camp at Ribchester, some 10 miles SW of Eaves. Over the centuries, the area has had some illustrious land owners – many known to us via our history books. For some years the region was held by Roger Poitou but in 1101, Henry I granted the land to Robert de Lacy. It then passed to the House of Lancaster and so to the Crown on the accession of Henry IV in 1399. In 1465, Henry VI stayed at Waddington Hall, a mere mile from the present Eaves Hall. It was here, in a nearby wood, that he was captured and then taken to the Tower where he died.

Local History, Clitheroe, Riddle Valley, Lancashire

West Bradford, where Eaves Hall is situated, was part of the Manor of Slaidburn that held court at Clitheroe Castle until 1925. It was considered to be in the West Riding of Yorkshire back then.

The village has always had an identity and self-sufficiency of its own. The River Ribble used to be considered the border between Yorkshire and Lancashire. Back in 1888, the nearest bridge for traffic was Brungerley Bridge, first built in 1816 on the road between Waddington and Clitheroe. Prior to that there were only two river crossings – some distance away and very old. This may be why West Bradford didn’t identify closely with either Clitheroe or Lancashire until it was made a part of Lancashire during local government organization in 1974. Even today it remains part of the Diocese of Bradford, some 45 miles away, instead of the Diocese of Blackburn that is only a mere 15 miles away.

Pendle Hill, that dominates the Ribble Valley, is where George Fox had his vision in 1640 prior to his founding of the Quaker movement. West Bradford was also a destination for one John Wesley, Founding Father of Methodism, who visited and preached in a farmhouse in 1790. Just to make it truly international, Mahatma Ghandi also visited West Bradford, staying with a local Quaker family in 1931. He came to explain why India was no longer buying cotton textiles from the UK. As history tells us, he had no option when 300 million of his people needed the work. He described the area as beautifully quiet and now, many decades later, it has lost none of the charm that Ghandi experienced.