Freshfield
Freshfield is a district of
Formby in
Merseyside,
England, situated at the northern end of the town.
It has a railway station on the
Liverpool to
Southport line.
The name did not exist until Formby's second railway station,
Freshfield, was built in the 19th century and the name was chosen, as the local landowner, a certain Mr. Fresh, owned the adjacent field. In fact, the same farmer used the new station stop to bring in
human manure from nearby Liverpool to fertilise his field, a principal reason for why the station was built.
A process of reverse naming seems to have occurred with some people referring to the area of Formby around this station as "Freshfield". In reality, there is no such place and certainly no separate village from Formby. This can be appreciated when one considers that the Formby's parish church and, for some time, the centre of village life in Green Lane, lies within the area of northern Formby that is sometimes described as Freshfield.
