Southport

Southport, a watering-place of Lancashire, at the mouth of the Ribble estuary, 18 miles N. of Liverpool, 37 WNW. of Manchester, and 19 S. by W. of Preston. The first house was a wooden inn built from a wreck here in 1792, on what then was a sandy waste; and since about 1830 the place has grown more and more popular, enjoying as it does a mild climate, and having broad level sands. The esplanade (3 miles long) commands views of the Welsh and Cumberland mountains, and from it projects a pier (1465 yards) constructed in 1859-68 at a cost of £25,000, with a steam tramway running along it. Other features of Southport, with date and cost, are the Pavilion and Winter Gardens (1874; £140,000), comprising a theatre, concert-hall, aquaria, &c.; opera-house (1891; seating 2000); the Cambridge Hall (1874; £25,000), with a clock-tower 127 feet high; the Victoria Baths (1871; £45,000); the Atkinson Public Library and Art Gallery (1878; nearly £15,000); the Grecian town-hall (1853); the market-hall (1881; £40,000); the Victoria Schools of Science and Art (1887); the convalescent hospital (founded 1806; present building 1854-87); the Hesketh Public Park of 30 acres (1868); and a marine park and lake (1887; £13,000) on the foreshore fronting the town. Nathaniel Hawthorne, then United States consul at Liverpool, describes Southport as it was in 1856 in vol. iii. of his English Notebooks (1870). It was made a municipal borough in 1867, the boundary being extended in 1875. Pop. (1851) 4765; (1871) 18,085; (1881) 32,206; (1891) 41,406.