Every place-name has a meaning, usually one that dates back more than 1,000 years.

The Lancaster district roughly covers the ‘South of the Sands’ section of the old Hundred of Lonsdale.

It is an area for which written records simply do not exist before the Domesday Book of 1086.

What we know of the history of the Lancaster district therefore has to be pieced together. We use archaeology, metal detected finds, place-names, surviving stone sculpture and rare survivals such as St Patrick’s chapel at Heysham.

2022 was the centenary of the publication of ‘The place-names of Lancashire’ by Eilert Ekwall. To celebrate we ran a series of facebook posts looking at local place-names and featuring photographs from the museum collections. These posts have now been transferred to this website and we will continue to add to the list over time.