Eccles cake Eccles cake An Eccles cake is a small, round cake filled with currants and made from flaky pastry with butter, sometimes topped with demerara sugar. Eccles cakes are named after the English town of Eccles, historically part of Lancashire, but now classified as a town in the City of Salford, Greater Manchester. It is not known who invented the recipe, but James Birch is credited with being the first person to sell Eccles cakes commercially, which he sold from his shop at the corner of Vicarage Road and St Mary's Road, now Church Street, in the town centre in 1793.
Tom Eccles Tom Eccles Tom Eccles (5 October 1893 – 3 February 1962) was a British trade unionist. Eccles was born in Blackburn in 1893. In 1912, he joined the National Union of General Workers in 1912, a union in which his father, Fleming Eccles, was prominent. Eccles fought in World War I, but was seriously injured and spent a lengthy period as a prisoner of war. On repatriation to the UK, he again became active in the union, which later became part of the National Union of General and Municipal Workers (NUGMW), serving as a district organiser, then as the Lancashire