By Geoff Wright, Susan Stacey and Andrew Brown
Families are happily enjoying Christmas in the historic Wayfarers Shopping Arcade in Southport for the 125th year!
It’s a festive tradition that has delighted generations of Sandgrounders and visitors.
This year is no different. The arcade, which opened in 1898, looks stunning once again with beautiful Christmas decorations throughout.
Inside are lots of places to grab the perfect picture of you and your family.
You can meet Santa at the Christmas Grotto – no booking needed – or you can enjoy free entertainment through the Panto Store.
Christmas at Wayfarers Arcade in Southport
Wayfarers Shopping Arcade is a striking Grade II listed structure at the heart of the town’s famous Lord Street boulevard.
The Grotto opened on 2nd December with the next dates you can visit:
Sunday 10th December 2023
Saturday and Sunday 16th and 17th December 2023
Thursday and Friday 21st and 22nd December 2023
Saturday and Sunday 23rd and 24th December 2023
There is no need to book. Just turn up on each of these days between 11am and 4pm, or between 11am and 2pm on Christmas Eve.
Wayfarers Arcade on Lord Street in Southport
Enjoy a Santa visit and a quality gift for £10 per child.
There is more festive fun coming too with free festive pantomime shows!
These take place at the Panto Store inside Wayfarers Shopping Arcade on Sundays 10th December and 17th December.
A Wayfarers Arcade spokesperson said: “Wayfarers Arcade in Southport is looking forward to a very special and lively festive season.
“The grotto is changing and little visitors this year wanting to meet Santa will be in for a fun time when they are welcomed by professional actors as festive characters.
“The Victorian arcade is spectacular at Christmas with a selection of interesting independent shops for those special gifts and two cafes for relaxation.”
Red Rum meets fans at Wayfarers Arcade in Southport in September 1982
The arcade recently celebrated its 125th anniversary with a spectacular Victorian Weekend, with actors from Gambolling Arena Theatre Company and dancers from Wright’s Performing Arts.
Wayfarers Shopping Arcade was created during the era of Queen Victoria.
It was a stunning architectural masterpiece that wowed visitors when it first opened, as a retreat from the noise and mud of the open streets and horse-drawn traffic outside.
When the arcade opened it was unsurprisingly described as ‘probably the handsomest in Great Britain’.
The arcade is a near untouched structure and one of Southport’s most celebrated features.
It took eight years to build and boasts an impressive domed glass roof, supported by decorative and intricate metalwork, stained glass windows, tiles and handrails, and mahogany shop fronts.
Shoppers at Wayfarers Shopping Arcade in Southport were treated to Christmas Carols from a variety of bands plus a visit from the Southport Theatre pantomime cast in December 1982
The upper shopping level features eye-catching balconies with many original features which can still be seen today.
The balconies were intended to be Southport’s answer to the ‘rows’ at Chester, to create a pleasant and fashionable promenade on which to view the shops – and the shoppers.
The 1899 publication ‘Sunny Southport’ records: ‘The shops, 72 in number, resemble the rows in the ancient City of Chester, standing one over the other.’
It hasn’t always been known as Wayfarers Shopping Arcade.
It was first known as the ‘Leyland Arcade, named in honour of Southport’s Liberal MP, Capt. Sir Herbert Scarisbrick Naylor Leyland.
Leyland Arcade, now Wayfarers Arcade, on Lord Street in Southport
It opened on 1st October 1898.
The original idea for the magnificent structure was the brainwave of a more than typical wealthy Victorian entrepreneur, Southport estate agent John Humphrey Plummer, who at the time owned most of the shops on Lord Street.
However, the project was originally part of a much more ambitious scheme – which was to link up with the Promenade, not just West Street. Unfortunately, due to a disagreement, the farmer who owned the much needed adjoining West Street land, fell out with Plummer and refused to sell his valued plot.
The original front section consisted of 13 lock-up shops, the rear portion wasn’t ready for occupation until a few months later; there were four or five shops and a ‘caretaker’s house’ on the ground floor, together with numerous offices, ladies’ club, sale-room, and ‘other conveniences’ on the first floor, and an Assembly Hall on the second floor.
Nomads at Wayfarers Arcade on Lord Street in Southport in May 1982
The construction of Wayfarers Arcade was carried out from designs and under the supervision of the well-respected architect George J. Bolshaw (of Hurst and Bolshaw 50, Lord Street), using Southport contractors: – Front section, Messrs. Vaughan Brothers; back section, Messrs. Wishart and Irving (published in ‘The Building News’, July 8 1898).
Bolshaw also designed Westminster Buildings (where June the Florist is); Coronation Buildings, St Simon and St Jude’s Church, and the Prince of Wales Hotel.
The original plans for Wayfarers Arcade boasted ‘electric light is employed throughout,’ and the whole structure was ‘heated throughout by a circulation of hot-water so arranged that each tenant could regulate the temperature of their own premises.
The Grade II listed shopping arcade has always brought together the best of stunning architecture, lovely ambiance and unique mix of boutique shops and cafes to delight tourists, visitors and shoppers, in much the same way the Victorians planned. For them the latest technology meant electric lighting throughout the Arcade – today it probably means Wi-Fi!
People enjoyed a very special Victorian Weekend as the historic Wayfarers Shopping Arcade in Southport celebrated its 125th anniversary. Master of Ceremonies Jordan Plunkett with children from the Alison Wright School of Dance and Drama. Photo by Andrew Brown Stand Up For Southport
The arcade opened with 32 shops (or units) on the ground level and 24 rooms on the first floor (56 in total).
There were four fancy goods shops, four confectioners, two furriers, two ladies’ outfitters, two tobacconists, an optician, rubber and hosepipe manufacturers, a linen warehouse, stationers and printers, milliner, boot maker, photographer, an oriental bazaar, a toy dealer, a draper, a hairdresser, an estate agent and a coal merchant. The first shop to open its doors was a family business – ‘Karmy’s’ the jewellers.
The first directory entry for ‘Leyland Arcade’ is 1899 recording 24 (from 38) occupied and numbered business units; the listed ones were a ladies outfitter, portmanteau and trunk dealer, a rubber company, fur store, wine merchant, and Princes Café. Robert Plummer and Plummer and Blakey estate offices – probably related to the arcade’s visionary – were also based in a unit near the Concert Room.
Shoppers at Wayfarers Shopping Arcade in Southport were treated to Christmas Carols from a variety of bands plus a visit from the Southport Theatre pantomime cast in December 1982
When John Plummer died in 1928, he bequeathed the arcade to Cambridge University, which spent 20 years trying to sell it.
The university was responsible for painting the wonderful roof black, during World War II, for security reasons – which proved a costly process to remove.
In the 1950s it was purchased by Montague Burton (of Burton’s tailoring), and renamed ‘The Burton Arcade’. They spent many thousands of pounds restoring the arcade and its roof, replacing the original pitch pine flooring with asphalt, but retained the original edging. The company continued to let shop units to small specialised businesses, a policy that has carried on.
Shoppers at Wayfarers Shopping Arcade in Southport were treated to Christmas Carols from a variety of bands plus a visit from the Southport Theatre pantomime cast in December 1982
The Pedlar family first became involved in 1926 through Vyvian Pedlar and his sister Evelyn. Vyvian – later chairman of Boothroyds – was offered arcade premises at a low rent in the hope he would bring even more life to the arcade.
His three shops blossomed into ‘Wayfarers Arts,’ later controlled by Arthur Pedlar.
In 1935 they moved their Lord Street business into the arcade. Burtons sold the arcade to the Pedlar’s business, Lord Street Properties, in 1975, and they changed the name to ‘Wayfarers’ the following year, its name coming from the Pedlar’s original business.
Shoppers at Wayfarers Shopping Arcade in Southport were treated to Christmas Carols from a variety of bands plus a visit from the Southport Theatre pantomime cast in December 1982
Concerts and receptions were once catered for with a room at the far end of the arcade’s first floor – later converted to a billiard hall, then shops.
In the past a bandstand once took centre stage, in the middle of Wayfarers. The centre of the arcade was filled with chairs and Victorian and Edwardian ladies and gentlemen hired them for one old penny to listen to the daily brass band concerts in comfort, until it was removed in 1938. The bandstand had a grand piano in the centre (surrounded by palms and dracaenas), which was played daily, and there was a pretty amazing violinist, certainly in the 1950s.
Father Christmas and Mrs Christmas at Wayfarers Shopping Arcade in Southport. Photo by Andrew Brown Stand up For Southport
Vyvian Pedlar was also an expert on tropical fish and in 1935 installed a large aquarium in the arcade, with 30 tanks; unfortunately, this had to go four years later due to the outbreak of war in 1939, to save on electricity – and the 13m span of the glass-domed roof (one of the widest in England and Wales) had to be ‘blacked-out.’
Here’s to the 125th year of Christmas at Wayfarers Shopping Arcade in Southport. Here’s to many more.
Do you have a story for Stand Up For Southport? Do you need advertising, PR or media support? Please message Andrew Brown via Facebook here or email me at: mediaandrewbrownn@gmail.com
