479 and 481, Lord Street

This building comprises two shops on Lord Street, Southport, constructed in 1877 by the architectural firm MacGibbon and Ross, and subsequently altered. The structure is built of red brick with pale blue glazed brick dressings and some sandstone, topped with a slate roof. The architectural style is Victorian eclectic, incorporating elements of the Italian Renaissance.

The building has a rectangular plan oriented perpendicular to the street. The ground floor features a 20th-century shop front and a 20th-century verandah. The upper floors are elaborately decorated with chunky pilasters, bands of brick nail-head ornament, and a heavy cornice supported by stone brackets. A blind-arcaded parapet includes acroteria and a corbelled open-pedimented upstand in the centre, which features a roundel containing a sculpted female head.

A wide, round-headed arch extends through two stories, incorporating stone colonnettes at mid-level. A brick head with nail-head enrichment features a carved keystone which serves as a bracket to the upstand above. The first floor of the archway contains a mullion-and-transom window, while the second floor has a semicircular window composed of three round-headed lights with stone colonnetted mullions and patterned spandrels featuring star-shaped windows. The flanking bays have narrow, transomed windows on the first floor and very narrow, round-headed sash windows on the second floor; all windows, except the second-floor sashes, have small-paned leaded glazing.

The interior was not inspected during the listing process.

The building forms a group with Nos. 469-473 to the left and has a verandah attached to Nos. 487-495 on the right.