[4] The town was founded in 1792 by William Sutton, an innkeeper from Churchtown, who built a bathing house at what is now the south end of Lord Street.

[12] The earliest recorded human activity in the region was during the Middle Stone Age when mesolithic hunter-gatherers were attracted by the abundant red deer and elk populations, as well as the availability of fish, shellfish, and woodland.

The population was scattered thinly across the region, and it was at the northeast end of Otergimele (present-day Crossens), where blown sand gave way to alluvial deposits from the River Ribble estuary, that a small concentration of people occurred.

It was here that a primitive church might have been built, which gave the emerging village its name of Churchtown, the parish being North Meols (pronounced "meals").

Parts of the parish were almost completely surrounded by water until 1692 when Thomas Fleetwood of Bank Hall cut a channel to drain Martin Mere to the sea.

In the late 18th century, it was becoming fashionable for the well-to-do to desert inland spa towns and visit the seaside to bathe in the salt sea waters.

In 1792, William Sutton, the landlord of the Black Bull Inn in Churchtown (now the Hesketh Arms) and known to locals as "The Old Duke", realised the importance of the newly created canal systems across the UK and set up a bathing house in the virtually uninhabited dunes at South Hawes by the seaside just four miles (6 km) away from the newly constructed Leeds and Liverpool Canal and two miles southwest of Churchtown.

[16] The locals thought him mad and referred to the building as the Duke's Folly, but Sutton arranged transport links from the canal that ran through Scarisbrick, four miles from the hotel, and trade was remarkably good.

A design from James Brunlees was approved at a cost of £8,700 and on 4 August 1859 a large crowd witnessed the driving home of the first support pile.

In 1914, a very short romance story between a "2 park road Southport" private soldier and French lady took place in Valenciennes in north France during early First World War as described by Andrée Ducatez's Journal.

On 21 March 1926, Henry Segrave set the land speed record in his 4-litre Sunbeam Tiger Ladybird on the sands at Southport at 152.33 mph (245.15 km/h).

[22][23][24] A violent riot the following day in response to the stabbings organised by far-right groups left 53 police officers injured, with eight sustaining serious injuries.

[28] Prior to that, Liberal Democrat John Pugh was the MP for Southport, holding the seat for 16 years until his retirement in the 2017 General election.

[30] Under the 1971 Local Government White Paper, presented in February 1971, Southport would have lost its county borough status, becoming a non-metropolitan district within Lancashire.

Rather than accept this fate and lose its separate education and social services departments, Southport Corporation lobbied for inclusion in the nearby planned metropolitan county of Merseyside, to join with Bootle and other units to form a district with the 250,000 required population.

In the same period in 1980, a Private Member's Bill proposed restoring Southport to Lancashire, and renaming the residue of Sefton to the Metropolitan Borough of Bootle.

Existing on the West Lancashire Coastal Plain, most of the town is only slightly above sea level and thus parts of Southport used to be susceptible to flooding.

Marine Drive was regularly closed due to flooding from high tides, but in February 1997, new sea defences started being constructed and in 2002 the whole project was completed.

[37] The coast-to-coast Trans Pennine Trail (TPT) stretches the breadth of northern England – 215 miles (346 km) from Southport in the west to Hornsea in the east.

The town went into decline when cheap air travel arrived in the 1960s and people chose to holiday abroad due to competitive prices and more reliable weather.

[64] An earlier permanent funfair, Peter Pan's Playground, closed in the 1980s and is now the site of part of the Ocean Plaza shopping development.

It featured in the video for the pop single Wonderful Life, by Liverpool band Black, which was also shot at other parts of the Sefton and North West coastline.

[67][68] Southport Model Railway Village is situated in Kings Gardens opposite the Royal Clifton Hotel and near the Marine Lake Bridge.

Other attractions in Southport include Splash World, an indoor water park situated on the back of the Dunes swimming pool which opened in June 2007.

[citation needed] Due to its position by the coast, Southport is a linear settlement and as such can only be approached in a limited number of directions by road.

[77] Several areas within Southport town centre have undergone major road redevelopment; the largest scheme was the construction of the Marine Way Bridge (opened May 2004), which connects the Lord Street shopping district with the new seafront developments.

[78] Also one of the main shopping areas in the town, Chapel Street, has undergone a pedestrianisation scheme to be similar to parts of Liverpool city centre.

In line with the origins of the modern game, the club was composed of old public school boys, and was formed with the intention of improving the physical development of our young townsmen.

The Royal Birkdale Golf Club situated in the dunes to the south of the town is one of the venues on The Open Championship rotation and has hosted two Ryder Cups.

An article in the Northern Daily Telegraph for 22 September 1929 reports that a proposed meeting at Kew Speedway had been halted due to the intervention of the Auto Cycle Union.