Braggaboutlife

Southport is a bracing seaside town with beautiful, wide tree lined Victorian Boulevards,
Cast Iron, glass covered verandas to its main shopping street and outdoor cafes.

The resort was one of the first seaside towns to be developed for the new middle
classes which developed as a result of the vast growth in cotton & woollen mill
building which developed in Lancashire as part of the Industrial Revolution.

Thus it also has lots of fine buildings beautiful gardens & some interesting arcades.

The plebs went up the coast to Blackpool by the train load.

I was last in the town in the 1960’s when like many other seaside resorts it went through
a very depressed time but now it is up and running & making the best of its heritage.

The interestingly the first holiday visitors came via the Leeds & Liverpool canal to a point
where they could be taken by carriage to the seaside salt baths on Southport Seafront.

Only one problem with the  Town, the sea is over a mile away from the sea front, but in typical Victorian style they over came that problem by creating a massive boating lake & putting a
funfair on the side of the lake with its own miniature railway & then they built a pier 3/4 mile
long, across the lake and the beach. The pier also has its own train from end to end.

Ornamental bridges leading to the funfair.

In contrast the origins of Burscough sit at the other end of the social spectrum.
The town owes its existence to the canals Night Soil trade which developed
from Manchester & Liverpool to feed the land improvement needs resulting
from the reclamation of the Lancashire fenland.