The Formby Civic Society (FCS) warmly welcomes you to our website.

This site has been designed and maintained to help make learning about Formby more accessible and appealing to a wider audience, with information about the Society, offering members Formby’s history and the latest news and events within the area.


We were founded as ‘The Formby Society’ in 1953. Our aim has always been to preserve, protect and celebrate  Formby’s heritage. Today we are registered as a Charity and affiliated with now ‘Civic Voice’, the National Charity for promoting civic pride in England and making the places we live more attractive, enjoyable and distinctive.

Our Society was founded to:

● foster the identity of Formby
● safeguard its amenities
● develop its cultural activities and
● encourage local studies

The Society is also affiliated with the Merseyside Civic Society.

In helping guard Formby’s ‘unique identity’, from the beginning we have closely monitored local Planning Applications and make representations when necessary through our Amenities Secretaries.  Our work in this area is significant and we are grateful for the members of the Society who give so much of their own time selflessly to guard the interests of our community.

In the early 1980s we played a leading role in the establishment of Formby’s only Conservation Area: the Green Lane Conservation Area.  We have worked closely with Sefton Council officers to monitor this Conservation Area and ensure it is unharmed by development that does not fit in with the historical environment.

We have built up a valuable historical archive and local history library, which are both still being added to through the generosity of local people. In addition a valuable record of Formby’s past is provided by a high quality pictorial collection, now digitally scanned, including over 5000 images of cottages, farms, houses and lanes; the Sibley Collection of drawings and watercolours and a considerable collection of documents and maps, much now accessible via the Internet.

We also have copies of the Formby Tithe Map and Schedule, (1845), a particularly valuable historical resource. The schedule has also been digitised. Using these assets we have carried out research on the history of many local subjects such as the Formby Lifeboat Station, (The First in Britain), Asparagus Cultivation, early Flying at Freshfield (1910 -12), and ‘Sand-winning’ here in the first half of the 20th Century. We are currently working on the ‘Home Front’ in Formby during the first World War. Duke Street Library holds the unique Formby Tapestry, created by founder member, Lilian Rushton, which provides a visual record of Formby’s history from the Vikings to the 20th Century.

Our collections also include a unique collection of Ceramic Models of old local Cottages here and in full on flickr here and an extensive collections of photographs which are available to view  at our flickr site by clicking here

We have assisted the National Trust in establishing:

The Asparagus Heritage Trail
The Lost Resort Trail and the Devil’s Hole Trail

all of which have excellent marker boards to assist walkers.

We recognise and celebrate the heritage of our Formby community through recording the memories and stories of people who live here or who have lived here, preserving an archive of materials to share, devising activities for community members to share and recall their stories and memories and to use whatever materials we can find to research our past and record it for future generations.

A key part of what we do is to make ourselves available to others in the community to support their own particular needs, such as providing talks and local history walks for schools, recreational walks for the local community based on wildlife, buildings and historical topics and printed materials such as local taster walks and fully-researched books based on topics of local history.