Southport Audio Tour: Hands to the Sea

Thomas Mawdsley put this hotel up in eighteen thirty-two, in a neat late Georgian style, and Southport knew it first as the Bold Arms. Then John Halfrey opened it... and fair to say, he made himself part of the street. He held the licence for more than forty years, which means whole generations of regulars would have known his face behind the counter. But a place like this only worked because of people the record barely kept. Kitchen boys turned the spit, ostlers led carriage horses away to the stables, and chambermaids changed the linen for guests coming in by coach from Liverpool. Down in the tap-room, tradesmen mixed with visitors, so this wasn’t just a grand resort address on Lord Street; it was part of the town’s working bloodstream. That matters, mind you, because the glamour Southport sold rested on hands like theirs... the same kind of labour we’ll keep meeting by the lake, the baths, and the pier. So remember Halfrey here: forty-odd years, one building, one street, one working life. Then carry on south to Wayfarers Arcade. Those were the kind of hours that kept the staff busy from breakfast through last orders.

On your left, this arcade starts with John Humphrey Plummer... not a grand benefactor, but a sharp local businessman who owned most of the shops along Lord Street. He wanted an indoor shopping place people could use in all conditions, and he put his own ambition behind it. Mind you, the first name over the door honoured Southport MP Sir Herbert Leyland, not Plummer at all. From eighteen ninety, George J. Bolshaw of Hurst and Bolshaw, right here on Lord Street, drew it up, while Vaughan Brothers handled the front and Wishart and Irving the rear. Local firms, local graft. When it opened on the first of October, eighteen ninety-eight, this was cutting-edge: electric lighting throughout, hot water circulating to forty-five shop units, plus a bandstand, aquarium, caretaker’s house and an Assembly Hall upstairs. Those mahogany shopfronts still carry that world. Think of it: Plummer, Bolshaw, and forty-five shop assistants taking their places as the lights came on for the first time

On your right, these War Memorial Fountains mark Southport’s main civic memorial... and they change the story of this elegant street a bit. The names here were not grand figures. They were working men from the resort itself: men who pushed bath chairs, drove the pier tram, kept hotel kitchens and bars going, and launched the lifeboat when others stayed ashore. In nineteen fourteen, Kitchener’s Pals scheme promised that mates could enlist and serve together. Southport answered in numbers, sending men into the seventeenth and nineteenth battalions of the King’s Liverpool Regiment. That sounded comforting at first... neighbours with neighbours, workmates with workmates. But it meant whole communities could be shattered together in France. Think of Ralph Rylance here too. He came from Blackburn, worked for a solicitor’s firm, played for a team called the Lawyers, and helped turn Southport from rugby to football in eighteen eighty-one. The same football community, fair to say, later saw its sons go to the Somme. These names are the town’s hidden workforce, remembered in stone. When you’re ready, head on towards Southport Pier, about seven minutes away. This memorial is accessible at all hours.

Look along Lord Street: a full mile of shopfronts, glazed canopies and garden strips... the elegant stretch that made Southport famous. In eighteen forty-six, the exile Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte stayed in lodgings just off here, and recent research has found documents linking him with the Gerard family, who were well known in Southport. Now here’s the twist. From eighteen fifty-four to eighteen seventy, that same man, as Napoleon the Third, drove the rebuilding of Paris with broad tree-lined boulevards, covered arcades and sheltered walkways. Fair to say, the resemblance is hard to miss. But mind you, this street was not a gift from emperors. Local shopkeepers paid for those glazed canopies so customers could keep browsing, just as the porters, clerks and traders we’ve met kept the whole resort going. So I’d remember the first unnamed shopkeeper who glazed a frontage here... not the emperor who may have borrowed the idea. When you’re ready, carry on south along Lord Street to the next stop. It’s listed as open daily from two o’clock until half past eight.

Alright, this isn’t a natural lake at all. In eighteen eighty-five, Southport Corporation bought the foreshore from the Scarisbrick Trustees and Mr Hesketh, with a condition that the stretch from Birkdale Boundary to Seabank Road stayed for recreation, not building. In eighteen eighty-seven they dug out and enclosed this lake, with Kings Gardens beside it, and created one of the UK’s largest man-made pleasure lakes. The sea could retreat two miles at low tide, so if visitors wanted rowing, someone had to make safe water for it. Southport was a resort built and run by working people: boat hirers, launch crews, and maintenance hands, starting early, rigging, launching and hauling back every craft. The original Victorian boathouse still stands and still works. These are the unsung workers missing from the picture, same as Brunlees on the Pier or Plummer in the Arcade. Think of the first pleasure-boat hand pushing out the day’s first boat before the visitors were even awake. When you’re ready, head north along the Promenade to Victoria Baths.

On your right, Victoria Baths ranked among the grandest public baths in the country: two hundred and fifty thousand gallons of sea water, six pools, an Italian style stone front, and a bill of forty thousand pounds in eighteen seventy-one - around four million pounds now. Horton and Bridgford of Manchester gave it the grand face, but hidden hands kept it going. This was Southport’s Victorian and Edwardian seaside economy: visitors took the cure, while workers heated the Turkish suite, pumped and filtered the water, handed out linen, scrubbed slipper baths, and watched the pools. Inside, class and sex shaped everything - first and second class bathing, separate men’s and women’s facilities, and a gymnasium for men - and the Turkish baths lasted until nineteen seventy-eight. Outside, sand yacht clubs worked the beach here, and bath-chair men pushed invalid visitors past this facade each day. Picture one attendant with her linen basket at the foot of the Turkish stair... she kept the polite illusion running

The ninth of December, eighteen eighty-six. This is the Mexico lifeboat disaster of eighteen eighty-six: the German barque Mexico, four hundred and eighty-four tons, drove aground off Southport in a Force Nine hurricane. Three crews launched. Southport’s Eliza Fernley was hauled three and a half miles by horse-drawn carriage, then launched after 11 p.m. under Coxswain Charles Hodge, who took three extra men, making sixteen. Fourteen drowned: Charles Hodge, Ralph Peters, Benjamin Peters, Peter Wright, Thomas Spencer, Thomas Rigby, Timothy Rigby, Thomas Jackson, John Ball, Henry Hodge, John Robinson, Richard Robinson, Peter Jackson, and Harry Rigby. Henry Robinson and Bowman John Jackson survived when the boat capsized; they clung to the keel, swam ashore, and raised the alarm. Twenty-seven lifeboatmen died that night in Britain’s worst lifeboat disaster; the Mexico’s crew lived. For all Lord Street’s polish, this resort rested on working hands. The Atkinson keeps a permanent exhibition. Hold onto Henry Robinson and John Jackson on that upturned keel in the dark... then head inland along Marine Drive toward Lord Street.