Gone are the days of horses’ hoofs clattering on cobbled streets and the jingle of their harnesses as they trotted about on their daily grind.
Continuing with the letter “H”, Nostalgia pays homage to the humble horse: the four-legged powerhouse, without which Southport’s residents and visitors would not have been able to function very well.
They were vital in making the embryonic resort tick.
Movement and growth
Southport originated because of the internal movement of people and commodities, in and around the North Meols area, while the growth of the spa town needed the external links, with the rest of Lancashire as a start.
If people had not been able to reach this part of north-west England, the place obviously would not have materialised, at least not the way it did. With no mineral or industrial wealth, the village-cum-resort town owed all its vitality to the varied facilities that reached and left it.
Travelling in and around the rest of the county was no mean feat, let alone on the local sandy roadways, which were primitive, difficult and slow – and sometimes impossible to pass, especially in wet or wintry weather.
Variety of uses
Horses turned up in all sorts of contexts – pulling lifeboats into position to save lives, towing the first trams and firefighting appliances, pulling carts to market towns such as Ormskirk, Wigan and Preston for their owners to sell their wares. Horses also took the bathing machines to and from the water’s edge.
Away from the sandland, there was good fertile farmland, and the horse-powered plough was very much in evidence – hence the name of the old inn at Crossens.
Horsepower had, of course, long been used by shrimpers and cocklers and the bulk of the early residential population earned a basic living in the fishing industry or agricultural activities.
Several shrimping horses perished on the coast while working the tides, or drowning if the cart became stuck; the shrimpers very often only used a horse for a year, and then it was put down, and another was bought; the cart was far more important – horses were seen as disposable items.
The early development of Southport is closely connected with the Leeds-Liverpool Canal, England’s longest acanal, which opened in 1774. As with many towns, the canal brought dramatic changes to what became Southport, greatly influencing its growth and appearance.
It is amazing to discover just how many means of travel and styles of conveyances have been used in and around the town over the years.
Numerous types of horse-drawn vehicles, from luggage carts to luxurious carriages and stage coaches, met the barges of visitors, shuttling them, somewhat bumpily, to the new seaside village.
Horses – like donkeys – survived well in Southport for a remarkably long time. The sandy, dusty streets were filled with the hairy, four-legged creatures, pulling carts, carriages, waggonettes, and a variety of other contraptions as well as coaches and omnibuses.
The town certainly resembled the old Wild West, with drivers and wagon-trains shouting and waving their whips.
From the mid-18th century, stagecoaches became important for road transport of people and goods. They were not unlike the covered wagons of the Western films, but were much more solid, and often, for long journeys, with six or eight wheels and drawn by as many as eight horses.
Coaching parties came from far and wide, in carriages, charabancs and wagonettes, packed with trippers.
Livery stables were soon introduced, the first being George Hurst’s Horse and Jockey stable in 1817, at the now defunct Cross Keys Inn, Upper King Street. He was followed elsewhere by James Clare in 1824. By 1886 there were six livery stable keepers, including Benjamin Keen of the Royal Hotel Stables.
Hotels and inns
Many of our hotels and pubs began life as a coaching house, refreshment stop or terminus, with more than adequate stabling. The introduction of regular mail coaches came in 1784, and they lasted well into the 1840s. In 1886 Southport had 23 top hotels, and 14 taverns (not including the 38 beer retailers and two dozen wine and spirit merchants) – many of them boasting “first class stabling with every accommodation for horses”.
Other closely associated businesses found in the 1886 street directory included: 33 blacksmiths, four sadlers, 17 wheelwrights, eight coach builders, eight cart owners and wagon, sheet and tarpaulin manufacturers.
Carriages and cabs
Local transport in Victorian Southport was largely dependent upon the availability of horse-drawn carriages and Hansom cabs – the taxis of the day.
There were numerous hackney stands, with animals and vehicles being under stringent and proper restrictions: licensed, named and numbered.
In 1886 there were 38 coach and cab proprietors, including Goulder’s of Birkdale, George Oldfield, and Peter Rigby of Victoria Hotel Stables – who had “splendidly appointed wedding equipages” with “Clarence Landaus kept specially and used only for wedding parties”, and funeral equipages “unsurpassed by any in London or the Provinces”.
The Southport and Birkdale Carriage Company had a very lucrative business, the proprietor being John Barrington, and later became Gore’s coaches, well-known for its motor coach tours.
Goulder’s, formerly Birkdale undertakers, established livery stables, before Goulder’s Motors began trading. Quite a few of the old livery stable owners, and carriage owners, moved with the times when motor cars came in at the turn of the 20th century.
Horse-drawn trams within the borough were established by private companies, the first, the Southport Tramways Company (STC), founded in 1871. Two years later a service began between Birkdale Railway Station and Churchtown.
A second company, the Birkdale and Southport Company (B&SC), was founded in 1881, and in 1883 opened a line from London Square to Kew Gardens, subsequently extended into Birkdale as far as the Crown Hotel in Liverpool Road.
The ‘Golden Age’
The spread of the tram network helped knit and develop the town’s infrastructure. The mobility for the majority of residents and visitors alike sparked Southport’s “Golden Age”.
The tramway era, from 1873, coincided with the main period of development, and in the thick of it was the horse. The trackway was one of the densest in the whole country, and with other traders busy, few residents would escape a four-legged creature hauling something.
This was the first vehicle to provide cheap mobility to the masses. At the time, the only public transport in the town was the horse-coaches operated by innkeepers and hoteliers to and from the canal wharf at Scarisbrick Bridge. There was just an assortment of horse-drawn hackney coaches, victorias, landaus, wagonettes, brakes and charabancs taking people to outlying villages like Marshside.
There was no competition for the horse-drawn tram in its era. The smooth railed tramcars allowed horses to pull twice as many passengers.
The tramway of course had opposition, with some fearing the rails would hinder the good people’s horses and carriages, and the tram’s rumbling and jolting would frighten horses, causing them to bolt.
The last horse cars ran in December 1902, and 32 years later, on December 31, 1934, the death knell sounded for the tram in Southport.
There were of course numerous other small businesses that needed a strong and fast form of transport, so used a horse, in conjunction with an array of vehicles to ferry their goods from A to B.
In 1886 there were 70 coal proprietors, merchants and agents, including the Wigan Coal & Iron Company, sole agent for the Southport district, with its depot in Derby Road, and no fewer than 44 dairymen transported their milk on horse-drawn carts or wagons.
So in the years before the motor car and trucks took control, the power of the horse was still the best way for businessmen to deliver their goods to the Southport shops. It was only after WWI that the horse began to be replaced by motorised transport – a mechanical form of horsepower.