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KEW GARDENS, SOUTHPORT

These commercial pleasure gardens were built in the 1870s as a feature for the growing, up-market, seaside resort of Southport. This article tells the story of the garden’s life and development.

By Graham J. Fairhurst, Southport, Lancashire.

Over the years, two companies seem to have been associated with the running of the Gardens:

• Kew Gardens, Southport, Company Ltd.
• The Southport Zoological Gardens Company Ltd.

Opening the gardens

The Gardens were 12 acres (5ha.) in extent, on a triangular site, with the long side fronting onto Scarisbrick New Road, the main road into Southport from the east. The Gardens were probably laid out around the same time that Scarisbrick New Road was constructed. Prior the construction of Scarisbrick New Road, the main route into Southport had been along Meols Cop Road, Norwood Road, Roe Lane and Manchester Road. The Gardens were bounded by Town Lane (then a gravel, country lane) on the south side. Whilst much of Southport is built on the range of coastal sand dunes, the land at this location, near Fine Jane’s Brook, 1½miles (2.5km) inland from the coast, was marshy land called Blowick Moss.

The choice of name for the gardens at Southport in seeking association with the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew alongside the River Thames is an interesting use of marketing. The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew were founded in 1759 by Princess Augusta, the mother of King George 3rd and by the 1870s, in the middle of the Victorian Age, had become a pre-eminent institution, undertaking plant research and receiving seeds and plants from all over the world from British expeditions. The iconic buildings: The Palm House and The Temperate House had then just been built at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.

People in the Victorian times were very interested in technical advances and science and the promoters of Kew Gardens in Southport would have been inspired by these developments in London. The creation of something similar, but on a smaller scale and with more of a focus on entertainment for Southport’s visitors and residents rather than academia was seen as a venture that would generate income for those who invested in it.

An extract from the 1892 Ordnance Survey Map showing Kew Gardens and the Railway Station.
An extract from the 1892 Ordnance Survey Map showing Kew Gardens and the Railway Station. Scarisbrick New Road runs from the top left-hand corner to near the lower right-hand corner. The tramway ran along Scarisbrick New Road as far as the entrance to the Gardens, by the Hotel. Ash Lane is now called Haig Avenue and Everard Road.

What was there?

The landscaped gardens included a hotel, a pavilion which could accommodate 1,000 people, refreshment rooms, large conservatories and ornamental plant and fruit houses together with a two acre lake, bowling greens, tennis courts and swings. The lake had three islands which were linked together by ornamental bridges and visitors could take trips in Venetian style gondolas or hire canoes and boats. In winter, the lake was used for skating. The Gardens therefore contained a range of activities so that people could have a pleasant day trip there. 

The Gardens in their hey-day in the 1880s. The viewpoint is from the south-west, looking over the lake with its boats and ornamental bridges. The Hotel is immediately to the right of the flagpole with the music and dining pavilion next right. The tall frameworks in the left distance may be swings.

The associations with the royal names for marketing continued in the original name of the hotel: ‘The Alexandra Hotel’. Princess Alexandra was Danish and was married to Queen Victoria’s son, Albert Edward (later Edward 7th). Alexandra became Queen in 1901, having been Princess of Wales since 1863. 

The Alexandra Hotel and entrance gateways to the Gardens. The dining, music and dancing pavilion is the long building stretching into the site behind the Hotel.

The Southport Kew Gardens were remodelled in the 1880s by the Manchester-born landscape architect John Shaw FHS who, interestingly, had trained in horticulture at the London Kew Gardens. 

Getting there

Southport at this time was developing very fast and had become large enough to need a good public transport system. This was in the form of a horse tramway network and Kew Gardens became very popular when the tramway reached them from London Square in the town centre in May 1883. 

When the Liverpool, Southport & Preston Junction Railway opened its line between Southport and Liverpool in November 1887, passing close to the Gardens, a station was opened to serve them and the adjacent area. 

Advertising

Kew Gardens were not the only commercial pleasure gardens in Southport in this period as the Botanic Gardens had been developed in Churchtown as a very similar concept and it is likely the two vied with each other in terms of attractions. 

A tree-lined avenue in the Gardens.

The trades directory for Southport for 1889 presents the Kew Gardens, Southport, Company, Limited with an introductory verse of poetry: 

‘Where Southport’s drifting dunes of sand 

Mingle with wastes of marshy land, 

There rises on the raptured view 

Another and fairer Kew, 

Whose budding charms may well inspire 

Traditions of its Royal Sire!’ 

The Gardens would certainly have provided a contrast to what was otherwise then a wide-open expanse of mossland. When one looks at the photographs of the Gardens it is very impressive what was achieved in terms of planting and landscaping. 

The entrance area within the Gardens, then called a Zoo Park.

1880s & 90s

It seems that apart from the remodelling of the gardens under the direction of John Shaw, a number of changes occurred during the late 1880s and early 1890s. The hotel was renamed ‘the Richmond Hotel’ around 1890. This was an appropriate choice of name which sought to maintain ‘associations with the London Kew and royalty’; the London Richmond being the royal estate adjacent to Kew. There was a zoo on site by the late 1880s and this seems to have become one of the main features. The Menagerie was possibly created through conversion of one of the existing structures. The 1909 Ordnance Survey Plan puts the title ‘Zoological Park’ on the Gardens and shows extensive aviaries in the area between the lake and Scarisbrick New Road. 

The Menagerie as drawn in the 1889 trade directory for Southport.

The tramway from the town centre to Kew gardens was electrified in January 1901, something which would help maintain the popularity of the Gardens. A high-profile event occurred in 1904 when the Royal Lancashire Agricultural Society held its annual show at Kew Gardens. 

An eloquent description of the Gardens with sardonic tone is provided by Wilfred Thorley (1878-1963), Southport’s famous poet and translator. Wilfred was born in Scarisbrick New Road, not far from the Gardens. In his recollections he describes the Gardens as follows:

‘pleasure gardens with swan-lit water and their incipient zoo of malodorous monkeys and bedraggled and pince-nosed macaws, that were vaguely known to us as Kew Gardens’. 

1900s

The attraction seems to have remained busy until the First World War. After this, their running costs would have increased and the lifespan of some of the timber buildings had probably been reached. At the same time, the popularity of the Gardens seems to have declined. 

The trams stopped operating to the Gardens in 1925 and thereafter only ran as far as Haig Avenue. The Ordnance Survey plan published in 1929 shows the ornate timber buildings in the east of the site as having been removed. 

A view south across the Gardens from Scarisbrick New Road. The lake is in the distance.
The Monkey House. This seems to be one wing of the Menagerie building and shows the ornate architecture and detailing of many of the buildings.

The Gardens at this time seem to have been owned and managed by a Mr Simpson Cross, but seem to have closed down by 1930. The zoo was still open in the 1920s but things were probably becoming run-down. 

The author’s late father visited it many times as a young boy during the 1920s and told the tale of him and his friends from High Park on one occasion ‘liberating’ a small animal (possibly a monkey!) and taking it home, only to be strongly reprimanded by his mother and told to ‘take it straight back to where he had got it from’. 

This was a very difficult period economically for the Country and many businesses were failing then. The Botanic Gardens at Churchtown also closed down in 1933 and the Council later stepped in to acquired them as a public park. 

Abandonment of the Gardens

At Kew Gardens, most of the buildings were removed, except for the Richmond Hotel. A string of semi-detached houses was built along the Scarisbrick New Road frontage of the Gardens in the 1930s. 

A promotional leaflet from the last years of Kew Gardens.

The rest of the site remained abandoned for several decades with the old gardens used as an informal public open space for walks through the woods and with people fishing in the lake. Unfortunately, the land also suffered from fly-tipping of rubbish and it seems that by the 1960s, Southport County Borough Council were seeking to acquire the site as a public park. In the early 1970s, the Council refused an application to build houses on the site. However, the landowners appealed and, in 1972, this application was granted by a planning inspector. This was partially due to the applicant promising to plant new trees to replace those that would be lost. 

In the event, this housing development didn’t proceed and the site remained unused until the new Southport Hospital was built in 1988. 

what’s there now?

Even though the Gardens had gone, they had been in existence long enough for the name Kew to have become adopted by this inland district of Southport. 

Kew has grown immensely since the 1970s to become a large, pleasant residential suburb as well as hosting the hospital and the town’s largest retail park. 

The development of Southport Hospital has used the western part of the gardens site, whilst Queenscourt Hospice now occupies the southern part of the site. A small part of the lake and some of the woodland still remain within the Hospital site. 

Now that Kew has developed so much, it is to be regretted that the woods and lake were not retained as a public park. 

The old Richmond Hotel building was replaced by a new one on the same site around 2000. Fortunately, the name has been retained. 

All traces of Kew Gardens railway station have gone. Its site is now occupied by the B & Q store. 

Find out more

Information in this article is from: 

  • The writer’s own researches. 
  • Slater’s Directory of Southport & Birkdale 1889. 
  • Municipal Recollections, Southport 1900-1930 by J. Ernest Jarratt. 
  • A History of Southport. By F. A. Bailey, 1955. 
  • The work of Cedric Greenwood, former features editor for the Southport Visiter newspaper. 
  • Local historian, David Walshe, who runs the Secret Sand Land Facebook site, David has provided many of the photographs. 
  • The publication: Southport a Century Ago by Geoff Wright, published by Landy Publishing in 1992 ISBN 1872895107 (This contains a reprint of another 1889 trade directory for Southport.)