Southport

Scarisbrick is home to Scarisbrick Marina run by the Mawdsley family and sister marina of Fettlers Wharf in Rufford.

The £2m marina has been open for business since March 2009 and will eventually be home to 200 boats.

Many interesting features of Scarisbrick’s past can still be seen today. The Old School House opposite the Morris Dancers (once the Maypole Inn) was built in 1809 and has, in the past, been a school, a doctor’s house, a post office, and a shop. It is a listed building and is now divided into two dwellings. The canal is now used for leisure purposes, and the Blue Elephant (formerly the Red Lion) is the base for the popular Mersey Motor Boat Club. At Heatons Bridge, over the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, there remains one of the many defensive pillboxes erected as a precaution against invasion during the Second World War. It was from Pinfold, where the canal is closest to Southport, that William Sutton picked up waterway passengers for transport to his “Original Hotel”, known better as “Duke’s Folly” – the foundation of Southport.