Concerned Southport residents must be very pleased that the Old Cheshire Lines clock tower together with its Victorian façade could become the frontage of a new hotel and shops, if we are to believe the recent reports of Paul Bolton and his Vermont Development Company possibly bringing this project to fruition some time in the near future.
Since this old building was refurbished over 10 years ago as a requirement of building the Safeways supermarket, it has never been used nor has its beautiful ornate clock ever been working. It has even become the target of vandals with much of the lower stone plinth being damaged and the shop windows having to be boarded up.
The main entrance, currently used as a walkway to the now renamed Morrisons Wintergardens supermarket, may pose a problem, but our party campaigners feel that, with good architectural redesign this could be overcome. Certainly there will be a much better potential for hotel parking, as there is a considerable space at the rear of the building, if Morrisons would work in conjunction and allow some of it to be used.
A revamp of this sadly neglected southern end of Lord Street is long overdue and, with some tasteful restoration, a real opportunity arises to preserve this historic gem. The width and straightness of Southport’s famous street long ago even inspired the planners of Paris and Washington DC to copy our tree-lined spacious thoroughfare, much to the delight of their city residents and millions of tourists. This fast deteriorating building must now be quickly brought back to its former glory so as to complete the set of our great Victorian structures that run for almost a mile along a street that is considered to be the finest in all of England. Lord Street, for over 100 years, has defined the very centre of our long established ‘CLASSIC RESORT’, a term that has been hijacked and refashioned by expensive out-of-town consultants as recently as 2003.