Introduction to our Website The History of Royal Liver Friendly Society

This Website is dedicated to the organisation which created the world-famous Royal Liver Building, Liverpool. This organisation was the Royal Liver Friendly Society and this Website is designed, in part,  to complement the existing Facebook Page @RoyalLiverBuildingCentenary – 1911-2011.

It is our intention to tell this story of the Royal Liver Friendly Society by way of a series of comparatively short blogs or posts to give a flavour of what the Society was, what it stood for and how it developed from very humble beginnings in Victorian England in the mid-1800s to become “one of the largest Friendly Societies in the world”.

It is also our intention to begin to trail the intended release of the comprehensive history of Royal Liver Friendly Society spanning its 161 years of existence (1850 – 2011).

It is hoped that this Website, once fully developed and populated with some reasonably in-depth narrative and other illustrative content will both complement the book – The History of Royal Liver Friendly Society – 1850 – 2011 and will also be a source of rich and interesting information for anybody interested in elements of social history dating back to the Victorian Period in all parts of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.

Royal Liver was formed in 1850 and in due course that will be the year from which we begin to relate the history of the Society. Before we do, it is interesting to show this photo, taken in 1908, when Royal Liver’s plans for the famous Royal Liver Building began to come to fruition. However, to understand the boldness of the decision by Royal Liver to erect it’s new Head Offices at the Pier Head, Liverpool, we shall need to go back nearly 60 years before 1907 to the year 1850 and the formation of this new Friendly Society.