TRAMS helped keep Southport on the move during six decades that spanned the ‘golden era’ of the resort’s growth.
This long-gone chapter of local transport history is detailed in a fascinating new book, Southport in the Age of the Tram.
Co-authors James Dean and Cedric Greenwood – the latter an esteemed Southport Visiter journalist for 21 years – tell the full story of the town’s street tramway network that covered 17.5 miles at its height in 1924.
It was an era that began with the 1873 launch of horse-drawn street trams in Southport and ended in 1934 with the Town Council’s decision to shelve its electric trams in favour of buses.
Cedric writes in the book’s introduction that trams “helped to develop the town by giving mobility to the majority of residents and visitors who did not own a horse and carriage.
He continues: “As the tram was patronised mainly by those who could not afford their own carriages, it was generally stigmatised as the working man’s carriage.
“There were exceptions, such as the well-furnished trams to Birkdale Park and Hesketh Park and Liverpool’s exclusive first class trams.�
Southport in the Age of the Tram tells how it was Southport Tramways Company (STC) that opened two horse-drawn lines – running via different routes from Birkdale to Churchtown – in 1873-78.
On June, 3, 1873, the Visiter reported on the success of early journeys between St Cuthbert’s Place in Churchtown and London Square.
Our correspondent wrote: “The tramways did good business and the novelty of transit in Southport was no small attraction.
“Parties wended their way to Churchtown by the nearest route on foot or rode in the cars to the vicinity of the Strawberry Gardens.�
The Strawberry Gardens were part of the Meols Hall estate and were in 1875 succeeded by a much larger pleasure garden, named the Botanic Gardens.
The book traces the tram system’s development, including the opening of The Birkdale & Southport Tramway as the resort’s second horsecar company.
And in 1900 Southport Corporation opened three electric tramways, which made the trips from High Park, Blowick and St Luke’s to Hoghton Street.

A decorated private charter tramcar ready to leave London Square. This was an amateur snapshot of one of the last Corporation open-top cars in the early 1920s

Yet a unified tramway system only materialised in 1918, when Southport Corporation took over STC.
During the following decade, the tramways were modernised, upgraded and extended to Bedford Park in Birkdale.
The authors write that at the network’s heyday, “nobody in the town lived more than a five-minute walk from the nearest tram stop.�
Ultimately, the growth of bus and car use sounded the death knell for Southport’s trams.
The Town Council’s Tramways Committee noted there was congestion on Scarisbrick New Road as early as 1927, and blamed this on the tramcars running along the single line in the middle of the road from St Philip’s Church to Haig Avenue.
Seven years later, a large majority of council members voted to make the final switch to buses.
On New Year’s Day, 1935, the Visiter reported: “The passing of the trams was celebrated last night by members of the Transport Committee, accompanied by the Mayor and Mayoress.
“After the arrival of the party at the depot an old tramcar was set alight as a conclusion to the celebration.�
That may have been the end for the resort's trams, but Southport has retained a special place in tramway history.
Not only was the density of its network unsurpassed outside Britain’s major cities, its engineers helped pioneer passenger cable haulage in 1864 with the start of the pier tramway.
Today, the resort’s one surviving tramline remains on its restored pier, in the form of a battery-
electric unit that trundles the length of the pier in five minutes – the same journey time as the cable tram of 1865-1905.

Lord Street showing a Company tramcar stopping at the corner of Nevill Street

THE name Cedric Greenwood is likely to be familiar to longtime readers of the Southport Visiter.
For more than two decades, he was a highly respected news and features writer based at our Tulketh Street offices, eventually rising to the positions of chief reporter and deputy news editor.
Transport has been both a journalistic and personal passion for Cedric, who spent his weekends away from the newsroom restoring an old Leyland bus at Burscough aerodrome.
And in 1991, aged 53, he left journalism to take a job driving buses in Chester, before moving to Norfolk, where he lives today.
Southport in the Age of the Tram is the fourth book title and sixth volume which bears his name.
The first was a book on Southport’s architecture, ‘Thatch, Towers & Colonnades’, first published in 1971 and revised in 1990.
Cedric told LookBack that the new book’s primary author was James Dean, a Southport man and trams enthusiast who sadly died last year before the book’s completion, aged 86.
The former Visiter reporter completed and edited the work Mr Dean began.
Cedric said: “I think the whole period of the trams was a golden period. It was a golden age for Britain as well.
“Everything on Southport’s seafront was thriving. One of the main attractions was the Winter Gardens.
“You could go there in the summer or winter and get lost and enjoy yourself for the whole day – there’s nothing like it now.�
Today, aged 70, Cedric still drives part-time for a Norfolk coach company, as well as working on future publishing projects and enjoying line dancing and cycling.
Of his career at the Visiter he remembered: “It was a very happy time.�

Corporation car no.8 passes the old Market Hall in Eastbank Street, about 1908 Photos courtesy of Sefton Library Service

SOUTHPORT in the Age of the Tram is published by Silver Link and retails at £17.99. It is available at good bookshops including Broadhurst’s in Market Street, Southport.

Do you remember when Southport had trams? Was a relative once a local tram driver? Call LookBack reporter Robert Alcock on 01704-398287, e-mail robert
.alcock@southportvisiter.co.uk or leave a message below.

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