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
