Southport's grand hotels and gilded arcades belong to the visitors. The streets, the seafront, the pier and the railways behind them belong to a different town — the pleasure-boat crews who worked the Marine Lake before the tourists arrived, the bath-chair men who pushed invalids along the Promenade in all weathers, the pier workers who hauled the cable tram and kept its tramway running, the fourteen men of the Eliza Fernley who rowed into a Force 9 hurricane on 9 December 1886 and were almost all swallowed by it, the hotel landlord John Halfrey who kept the Bold Arms for over forty years, the Victorian entrepreneur John Humphrey Plummer who gambled his Lord Street shops on an indoor arcade lit by electricity in 1898, the cotton manufacturer William Atkinson who gave his town a library and never asked for his name on the door, and the Cheshire Lines clerks and porters who kept a Lord Street terminus running until the bus company inherited it in 1952. Heritage Open Days 2026 theme is Everyday Histories — the unsung working lives missing from the picture. This tour finds them at the water's edge and the end of the line.
SouthportThe oldest continuously operating railway station in Southport, opened on the Liverpool to Southport line as the town's first terminus in 1851. Chapel Street is the surviving Merseyrail terminus. The station and its predecessor served the working-class day-tripper trade from Liverpool as well as the resort's permanent railway workforce of drivers, guards, signalmen, cleaners and booking-office staff.
location_on
2
lock
The AtkinsonA Neoclassical library and arts centre on Lord Street, opened in 1878 after a donation of £15,000 from William Atkinson, a cotton manufacturer from Knaresborough in North Yorkshire. Designed by Waddington and Son of Burnley. The building houses a permanent exhibition on the Mexico lifeboat disaster of 1886, including artefacts and named records of the fourteen men lost.
location_on
3
lock
Southport Lord Street railway stationThe surviving Lord Street frontage of the Southport and Cheshire Lines Extension Railway terminus, opened 1 September 1884. The clock tower on the facade still carries the letters 'SCLER' below the clock face. The station closed to passengers on 7 January 1952; the trainshed was subsequently used by Ribble Buses. The frontage was retained when the building became a Travelodge in 2013-14.
location_on
4
lock
The Bold HotelA late Georgian hotel on Lord Street, built in 1832 by Thomas Mawdsley in late Georgian style as 'The Bold Arms.' It was opened and run by John Halfrey, who 'continued to hold the licence for over forty years.' One of Southport's first substantial hotels. Now a Best Western Signature Collection hotel.
location_on
5
lock
Wayfarers ArcadeA domed and barrel-vaulted Victorian indoor arcade on Lord Street, originally called the Leyland Arcade. It was conceived and built by John Humphrey Plummer, a Victorian entrepreneur who 'at the time owned most of the shops on Lord Street.' Work began in 1890; the arcade opened on 1 October 1898 with 45 electric-lit shop units. It was pioneering in its use of electric lighting and a circulated hot water system throughout. The mahogany shopfronts are virtually unaltered since 1898.
location_on
6
lock
Southport War MemorialThe War Memorial Fountains on Lord Street, commemorating Southport's dead from the First and Second World Wars. The Southport Pals — men from the town who enlisted together in 1914-15 — served in the 17th and 19th Battalions of the King's (Liverpool Regiment). Thousands of Southport working men answered Lord Kitchener's call; many of their names are recorded on the memorial.
