Christmas fun through the ages at historic arcade
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.
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 December 2 with the next dates you can visit: Saturday, December 16 and Sunday, December 17, Thursday, December 21 and Friday, December 22, Saturday, December 23 and Sunday, December 24.
Just turn up on any of these days between 11am and 4pm, or between 11am and 2pm on Christmas Eve.
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 with the next one taking place on Sunday, December 17.
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.”
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.
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. It opened on October 1, 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, saleroom, and ‘other conveniences’ on the first floor, and an Assembly Hall on the second floor.
The construction of Wayfarers Arcade was carried out from designs and under the supervision of the wellrespected 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!
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 Cafe.
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.
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 the Second World War, 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.
The Pedlar family first became involved in 1926 through Vyvian Pedlar and his sister Evelyn.