(A book well worth reading)
The modern name of Walney has a chequered past. Suggestions as to its original form include Hveneay (the island of bent grass), Vognay (grampus island), and Wagenay (island of quicksands). Victorian local historians were keen to attribute place names to original settlers and Harper Gaythorpe of the Barrow Naturalists' Field Club proposed that Walney was once Owaun'' island. The earliest written evidence for Walney was the late eleventh Century Domesday Book. Here the name recorded was Hougenai, meaning the island off the Manor of Hougun, as the Furness peninsula was then called. Subsequent documents reveal a bewildering variety of subtle changes: 1127 Wagneta, 1246 Wannegat, 1336 Waghenay, 1404 Wawenay, 1537 Waynow, 1577 Wauay. As late as the turn of this century local writers indicated that the 'L' in Walney was silent; a poem referred to the ferry as "old Wana's friend". Throughout these compilations and examples one theme is constant - the Morse suffix "ay" or "ai" meaning an island. It does seem to me that of all the suggested original names for Walney, that of Wagenay is the most convincing, with the term Hougenai being more likely as an aid to clerical administration. One idea I have not yet mentioned was presented in Thomas West's pioneering work, 'The Antiquities of Furness', published in 1774. West thought that Walney meant "the walled island", being a combination of wall and eaj, or literally a wall in the water. This explanation was revived almost two hundred years later in a Town Guide, which referred to the island deriving its name from the enormous wall of pebbles which lay at the South End. West's proposal was poetic but without foundation. And yet for the last one hundred and fifty years Walney has performed a role succinctly described by Dr. J.D. Marshall in 'Furness and the Industrial Revolution':- "Walney Island, nearly ten miles in length, and serving as a barrier against the westerly gales from the Irish Sea, gave protection to the deep anchorage of Piel and later to the small port of Barrow". The deep anchorage became docks for the shipbuilding industry which was to convert an isolated agricultural island into a modern suberb linked to the rest of Barrow.
