Hackney & Leigh - Grange-Over-Sands

The pretty country town of Grange has come a long way from its humble beginnings in the 16th Century as a grain store for nearby Cartmel Priory. The name Grange actually derives from the French word ‘graunge’ meaning granary. Grange had the suffix ‘Over-Sands’ added late in the 19th Century by a local vicar who was fed up with his post being delivered to Grange in Borrowdale by mistake! It carried on being a sleepy little fishing village virtually accessible only by crossing the sands of Morecambe Bay (a popular practice still being carried on today via charity walks but now under the strict supervision of the ‘Guide of the Sands’) The advent of the railway in 1857 brought businessmen from the rich mill towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire to take in the ‘bracing air and mild climate’.