The Ordnance Survey map (1:25000 1978 edition) marks a location close to the Silverdale/Warton parish boundary (GR 474737) with the name Quaker’s Stang. The name also appears on the 6inch/mile O.S. map of 1891. At the site, on the landward side of the 1830 dyke, there is no obvious feature to account for the name.

‘Stang’ means a pole or stake. It goes back to the Old Norse, but the Oxford English Dictionary (O.E.D.) gives examples of it in common use up to the end of the nineteenth century. (It is also an obsolete, form of ‘stank’ a pool or dyke)

‘Quaker’ might refer to the quick or quaking sands nearby, but ‘quaking’ is not used elsewhere on the map for quicksands. P.H.V. Booth in Warton in the Middle Ages (Warton Village Society 1976) quotes a thirteenth century document which used the place names Quytesandpole and Quitsandpole. Quaker is not given in the OED as ever meaning a quicksand. Quaker does, of course, mean a member of the Society of Friends. Could there be a reference to some actual Quaker? Or even a joke on what was originally an unkind nickname? It would be of interest if any member of the Society could throw light on the derivation of this name.

Published in Mourholme Magazines Issue 14 1990