Formby, Lancashire Genealogy

England Lancashire  Lancashire Parishes



Chapelry History
Formby St Luke was created a chapel of ease in 1748 from Walton on the Hill St Mary, Lancashire Ancient Parish.

Other places in the parish include: Ainsdale, Raven Meols, and Amsdale.

The common place-name ending -by is from the Scandinavian byr meaning "homestead", "settlement" or "village". The village of Formby was originally spelt Fornebei and means "village belonging to Forni". At that time Fornibiyum was a well-known Norse family name. He could have been the leader of the invading expedition which took possession of this coast. Until its closure in 1998, Oslo Airport in Norway was situated in a town called Fornebu. It was from Ireland in about 960 AD that these Norsemen or Vikings first came to the west coast of Lancashire, first trading or raiding and then settling. Tradition says that the Viking invaders failed to defeat the native Anglo-Saxons on the coast of Formby, so they sailed inland, up the River Alt, and attacked from the rear.[5] It is more probable that the Viking invaders simply found that the area was thinly populated and took control without any blood being shed. It is thought that the Romans used Formby as a major pass through for their troops during the time of their settlement

Formby is a town and civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Sefton in Merseyside.

Historically a part of Lancashire, it now forms part of the Liverpool City Region. Formby was built on the plain adjoining the Irish Sea coast. Largely a residential town, it is generally considered to be one of Liverpool's most affluent suburbs. Formby becomes a tourist hot spot during the summer months, with day trippers attracted to its beaches, sand dunes, and wildlife - most particularly the red squirrels and Natterjack toads.

"FORMBY, a chapelry,in the parish of Walton-on-the-Hill, union of Ormskirk, hundred of West Derby, S. division of Lancashire, 12 miles north by west of Liverpool. The chapel, dedicated to St. Peter, was in operation by at least 1620.

The Roman Catholic chapel of Formby is dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul, and was re-built during the reign of James II. The ancient churchyard, half a mile from the shore and two miles from the village, is used as a burial-place for the Roman Catholic population; it is curiously surrounded by sand-banks: no vestige of the church which stood upon the spot remains."

Civil Registration
Birth, marriages and deaths were kept by the government, from July 1837 to the present day. The civil registration article tells more about these records. There are several Internet sites with name lists or indexes. A popular site is FreeBMD.

Online index of Lancashire Births, Marriages and Deaths Lancashire BMD

Lancashire Online Parish Clerks
An extremely useful resource for research in Lancashire Parishes http://www.lan-opc.org.uk/

Online Records
 Church of England 

Formby chapelry's registers of christenings, marriages and burials, along with those of the ancient parish of Walton on the Hill to which it is attached, have been mostly transcribed and are displayed online at the following web sites and ranges of years:

For a full list of all those chapels surrounding Formby and comprising the whole ancient parish of Walton on the Hill to which it was attached, be certain to see "Church Records" on the WALTON ON THE HILL PARISH page.

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Lancashire Probate Records to find the name of the court having primary jurisdiction. Scroll down in the article to the section Court Jurisdictions by Parish.

Maps and Gazetteers
Maps are a visual look at the locations in England. Gazetteers contain brief summaries about a place.


 * England Jurisdictions 1851
 * Vision of Britain