Southport

I’d forgotten just how impressive Lord Street was. Its fashionable peak, renowned for bespoke shopping and imposing Victorian buildings may be well behind it now, but the layout remains – a long, broad, majestic, tree-lined, canopied swathe - the boulevard effectively separating seaside resort from modern, pedestrianised town centre.

We took a walk along Lord Street to find the Cheshire Lines station. Its tracks had approached the centre from the coastal side and the surviving frontage is now part of a Travel Lodge hotel. The Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway’s main station building was knocked down as part of the same type of now notorious post-war redevelopment that has blighted many a town centre, being replaced it in this case with a depressing slab of concrete and some shops. Lines to Liverpool and Manchester remain, but the third prong - to Preston - was abandoned in 1964.

Spirits were raised at the Atkinson. Two Grade II listed buildings facing Lord Street have been physically joined to create a quite splendid cultural centre, with museum, library, art gallery, performing arts workshops, theatre, café and gift shop. It was clearly well used and it had a lively, purposeful buzz about it. As well as a vibrant Cuneo painting in the art gallery, the museum holds the original artwork completed by Fortunino Matania for the most recognisable of his series of designs for quad royal railway posters. They were commissioned in the mid-1930s by the London Midland and Scottish Railway to promote the town as an all-year-round resort.

They are stunning, extravagant pictures, so colourful and attention-grabbing. Matania was a distinguished war artist who later illustrated historical stories for the women’s magazine, Britannia and Eve, in his lavish but detailed and accurate style. His image of well-to-do theatre goers emerging from the Garrick art deco venue into a wet night in Southport is a wonderful study. More recently a bingo hall, the former theatre is now completely closed down. Walking past the frontage, it’s easily overlooked, sadly - blank, ignored and forlorn. Like Southport as a whole, its surely got too much going for it for that situation to last indefinitely.