Ecclefechan is a small village in the south of Scotland in Dumfries and Galloway..
The name Ecclefechan is derived from the Brythonic for "small church" (cognate with Welsh eglwys meaning church and bychan meaning small, which has the form fechan following a feminine noun). After Gaelic later spread in the area, the belief arose that the name derived from the 7th century St Féchín of Fore. A suggestion that Ecclefechan lay within the early middle age kingdom of Rheged is based on an outdated and now widely rejected idea that Rheged comprised the lands of Cumbria and Dumfries and Galloway and also presumes that Ecclefechan existed as a settlement in those times (c.500-600s). The location of Rheged remains a mystery..
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The village is known as "Fechan" to the local residents.
Ecclefechan's village hall was formerly a Free Church, designed in 1877 bv George Laidlaw. It was already disused for worship by 1996, when John Gifford's Pevsner guide described it as a "Big and broad Gothic box ... with a rose window [now filled in] and gableted bellcote at the front gable".