Let's Have A Day Out - To Formby

The town of Formby is now located in the Borough of Sefton but historically in Lancashire there were three manors recorded in the Domesday Book under 'Fornbei'; Halsall, Walton and Poynton. Name changes over the years were firstly Fornebi in 1177, meaning "the old settlement" or "village belonging to Forni". Then it was then Forneby until 1500 before becoming Formby in the 16th century. This township or chapelry formed a detached portion of the parish of Walton, and included the manors and hamlets of Raven Meols on the southwest and Ainsdale on the north. In 1870-72, John Marius Wilson's 'Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales' described Formby like this; " FORMBY, a village, a township, and two chapelries in Walton-on-the-Hill parish, and a sub-district in Ormskirk district, Lancashire. The village standing on the coast, adjacent to the Liverpool and Southport railway, near the river Alt, 7½ miles W of Ormskirk; was formerly a market-town; and has a station with telegraph on the railway, and a post office under Liverpool. The township includes also the hamlets of Ainsdale and Raven-Meols. The increase of pop. arose from the erection of houses for persons from Liverpool. The property is divided among a few. Formby Hall is the seat of the Rev. L. Formby. A headland or projection, 3 miles SW by W of the village, bears the name of Form-by Point. Two beacons and a red tower are on the coast, and the floating light put up in 1834, at the Victoria or New Formby channel, on a line with the Crossby or main channel into the Mersey, is 3 miles WSW of the red tower. The Old Formby channel is nearer the shore, and not much used. The two chapelries are St. Peter and St. Luke and are jointly conterminate with the township." 

 

The glorious sandy beaches of Formby are perfect for family picnics, coastal walks, dog walking, wave jumping, kite flying or just lazy days at the beach. It is bounded on the west by the sea with the shore protected by lofty sandhills covered with a luxuriant growth of creeping willows and star grass, with the latter being systematically planted to keep the sand from drifting away. The area is conserved by the National Trust, and designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest, and as such only a few footpaths across this ground are open to the public. Here wildlife abounds, particularly the endangered red squirrel and the natterjack toad and it is only one of a few sites in England where they will breed. During the evening the male's distinctive song can be heard and is known locally as the 'Bootle Organ'. Also keep your eyes peeled for the dune tiger beetle. The recent expansion of the Nature Reserve at Freshfield provides a wonderful experience including a spectacular beach, extensive dunes and pinewoods with red squirrels, making it one of the few places in the UK where you can catch a glimpse of these shy creatures. The sandhills are also famous to local botanists as the habitat of several uncommon and characteristic wild plants, such as the Wintergreen, and they afford shelter from the sea winds to the villages of Formby, Formby-by-the-Sea and Freshfield which form practically one town. The area is surrounded by fields intersected by ditches where rye, wheat, potatoes and a variety of market products including fields of asparagus, a specialty in the district, are grown. Cockle raking and shrimp fishing lasted into the 19th century and fishing for shrimps and raking the sands for cockles still affords employment to some of the inhabitants. Towards the sea the soil and subsoil consist of blown sand, with fluviatile sand or loam towards the neighbourhood of the Alt; on the landward side the soil is peaty; to the east of Formby Hall a small area of keuper marls occurs. There are other things to occupy young and old out on a day visit with the Formby FootGolf Centre and the China Butterfly Craft Centre. 

Formby is a tourist destination for day trippers who, besides being attracted to the sand dunes and beaches, will also find the village a great spot for shopping and eating out. Formby town centre is home to a number of high street names as well as some independently-run shops and has as a variety of bars and restaurants that are well worth a visit. Also if you raise your gaze, there's another village to be observed at first-floor level. The upper storeys of traditional timber frame buildings were often constructed using a cantilevered protection called a Jetty that brought the upper floors out beyond the lower floor, and half timbering is a term sometimes used for buildings built in the medieval period. The majority of the oldest buildings within the area are to be found in the Freshfield half of the village.

The beach is the location of the first Lifeboat Station in the UK, possibly the world, and was created following a disaster in which eighteen ships became stranded at the mouth of the Mersey and 75 people drowned. It is believed to have been established as early as 1776 by William Hutchinson, the Dock Master for the Liverpool Common Council. Although no exact record has been found, the boat used is believed to have been a 'Mersey Gig'. The last launch from the station took place in 1916 and a film of this event survived. The foundations of the last of the buildings remain on the beach to this day. Erosion of sand on the beach is revealing layers of mud and sediment, laid down in the late Mesolithic to the late Neolithic, approximately 8,000 – 5,000 years ago, and covered in the early Bronze Age. These sediments, experts have discovered, often contain the footprints of humans and animals (red deer, roe deer, wild boar, wolf, aurochs, and birds (oystercatcher, crane and other waders) from that period. Aurochs are an extinct type of wild cattle that used to be found in Europe, Asia and north Africa, and were last seen in Europe in the 17th century. In June 2016, over 50 human footprints from 7,000 years ago were uncovered on the beach. 

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