At the Southport Athletic Society annual festival held at the Palace Hotel grounds on 5th August 1870, the attendance was "many hundreds". "There was a large grandstand on one side of the field and this was crowded principally by ladies, in light summer costumes". The program consisted of 19 events, three of which were bicycles races; a 1 mile race, a 2 mile handicap race and a 220 yds slow bicycle race.
The Birkdale Palace Hotel opened in 1866, it had 1,000 rooms and around 200 bedrooms and was a popular holiday resort hotel. Frank Sinatra and Clark Gable stayed there and the Beatles performed there in 1962. The hotel was demolished in 1969 and the grounds were developed for residential use. Palace Road runs through the old grounds.