Wigan Album

I have an old Billinge map and on it is Billinge Slack and Billinge Rant can anybody enlighten me about their meanings?

Fred - 'slack' comes from the old Norse 'slakki' meaning a shallow valley or hollow.
Unsure about 'rant'.

Rant probably means "edge" or "boundary", Old English: rend (cf. modern German rand meaning "side"). Circumstantial evidence: Billinge Rant is by Roby Farm, Roby meaning "farmstead/village at a boundary", Old Scandinavian: ra + by. So... fossil references to a former boundary? I'd be interested if there's any documentary evidence to confirm existence of a boundary there.

Back in viking times, a slack (correctly spelled slak) was a communal grazing area. normally, there would be some kind of posts, to which an animal was tethered by a longish rope"Rant" was a boundary or path around an area.

Roby is made up of two norse words. Ro and by. By is a settlement, but the word "ro" means brutal in most cases, although sometimes it can refer to other things

Billinge is a Norse word, there is a village in southern Sweden called Billinge, although it is pronounced differently.

I have an " address " for my great, great grandfather John Martlew, of Slack, Chapel End, Billinge from the mid 19th. century before he moved his family to St.Helens.