ECCLESFIELD  , a township in the Hallamshire

parliamentary division of the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, 5 M . N. of Sheffield, on the Great Central and Midland railways . The church of St Mary is Perpendicular, with a central tower, and contains excellent woodwork . It formerly bore, and must have deserved, the familiar title of the " Minster of the Moors." Ecclesfield was the seat of a Benedictine priory, which passed to the Carthusians in the 14th century . Cutlery and tools are largely manufactured, and there are coal-mines, paper mills and iron and fire-clay works . After the inclusion within the county borough of Sheffield of part of the civil parish of Ecclesfield in 1901, the population was 18,324 .