Pick Up A Brick at National Trust Formby

On Wednesday 17th August National Trust Rangers and Volunteers invited visitors to help keep Formby beach beautiful by clearing away some of the rubble, one brick at a time.

People were asked to pick up one brick from the beach and carry it to a trailer parked in the beach car park. A “brick-o-meter” kept track of the number of bricks collected.

The bricks and rubble on the beach come from the old car park that existed in this location before the National Trust started caring for this area in 1967.

Over the past few decades as the sand dunes naturally roll inland the old car park firstly became buried and now has become exposed dropping bricks and rubble on to the beach.

The National Trust hires contractors to clear the rubble using excavators and wagons but in order to get the machines on to the beach it needs to be at a time when visitor numbers are low and the tidal conditions are just right. This dramatically limits the number of days a year when this work can be done. It is also very expensive to use machines for clearance – around £12,000 per year.

Kate Martin, Area Ranger for National Trust Formby says “The idea of this event came from a facebook post. We thought that we might have a small number of people interested on the day but we certainly didn’t expect the response that we got, 231 volunteers collecting 615 bricks and in just 2 hours – amazing! We want to say a huge thank you to everyone who took part”