Wayfarers Arcade With Attached Verandah

Wayfarers Arcade with attached verandah is a late 19th-century shopping arcade and two shops, built in 1886 by G Smith of Glasgow. The building is located on Lord Street in Southport, and forms a group with numbers 293-307 to the left and numbers 319-325 adjoining to the right. The architecture is a Jacobean style, constructed from sandstone ashlar for the facade, with white glazed brick side walls, slate roofs, and a glass roof over the arcade itself.

The exterior presents three storeys and attics, with one and two windows separated by a gap containing the arcade entrance. The ground floor shops have been altered in the 20th century. The upper floors feature giant pilasters, fluted friezes, moulded cornices with small pediments above the centre of each bay, and steep Dutch gables with oculi and Jacobean finials on the right. Canted wooden oriels are located at the first floor, while the second floor has mullioned three-light windows with arched centre lights.

The attached four-bay verandah has cast-iron columns with acanthus enrichment, volute capitals, scrolled brackets with leaves, elaborate cresting in the first, third, and fourth bays, and single-pitched glazed roofs. A glazed barrel-vault, lettered frieze, and a large semicircular fanlight with enriched radiating glazing bars are notable features of the arcade entrance.

The interior consists of a straight passage leading to an almost octagonal concourse with an aisled nave extending west. The concourse and nave are lined with late 20th-century shops, above which are galleries with wrought-iron railings along the south, east, and west sides of the concourse and the west half of the nave. The upper floor panels largely oversail, with wide windows featuring arched Art Nouveau glazing in the overlights. The roof is glazed, supported by semicircular latticed girders with a pitched clerestory along the apex, variously decorated.