One of the main reasons I cruised to Liverpool was to visit with my friend Wendy and her family. She is from the Wirral originally, across the Mersey River from Liverpool itself. It’s sort of considered “Liverpool” by everyone except the locals (on either side!). Presently she’s living in Port Sunlight, a community built by the Lever brothers, of Sunlight soap fame. It’s a Model Village they began building in 1888 and envisaged as a decent place for their workers to live and work. They moved their soap works to the land, hired many architects (each to design a block of homes), built a school, a hospital, a train station, an outdoor pool, and many other recreational and social facilities.
The Lady Lever Art Gallery was my first stop, and is one of the best private galleries I’ve ever been to. Paintings, sculpture, furniture, anything artistic can be found in the huge collection. Even the building itself is beautiful.
The museum details the history of the village, showing how the lives of the workers were changed by having decent housing and a safe community. Many went from living in one or two rooms housing as many as 10 people and having a single toilet down the alley that served several homes, to living in a two level attached house with indoor plumbing, several bedrooms, a sitting room, kitchen and bathroom. The toilet remained out in the back garden but was for just their own home at least! They are often still there, converted to garden sheds but identified by the vented door.
Each block of homes was designed by one of nearly 30 different architects. In the back of the blocks were allotments where residents could grow their own vegetables. Many of the buildings built for the community are still there, often repurposed. The hospital, built in 1907 was reopened in 2008 as the Leverhulme Hotel. Hesketh Hall (formerly home to the Royal Legion) is now 13 flats and a pub. The former children’s school is now a working men’s club. The open air swimming pool is now a garden centre and cafe.
William Lever himself rose through the aristocratic ranks, eventually to be known as the 1st. Viscount Leverhulme in 1922. He saw the community as an early form of profit sharing, but where he invested the profits back into the community rather than giving them directly to the workers. It’s fair to note that all of these amenities are for the workers, those living in the community. It’s only in recent years that outside visitors have moved in. Port Sunlight has been suggested as a World Heritage Site, and contains 900 Grade II Listed buildings (meaning there can be little or no alterations). It was his very profitable soap business that originally funded the village, and in fact the company is now bigger than ever, presently known as Unilever. They produce many things besides soap and have over 148,000 employees worldwide. Obviously something worked. It’s a lesson that many present-day companies could learn… (can you hear me Walmart?)
Some of the many styles of homes in Port Sunlight:
There are many more interesting and beautiful buildings and locations in Port Sunlight than what I’ve shown here. If you are ever in Liverpool, it’s an easy train ride over the river (well, under it actually) and is well worth the trip. I may sound like a promotional advertisement, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
That is just… wow… enlightened capitalism at its best. Those workers must have thought themselves so lucky to work for Lever that they would never want to leave. Bet they didn’t have too many strikes in his day.
Wonder what happened to their housing arrangements when they resigned or retired? Did they have to move elsewhere in the country?
So you are (or have been) in Liverpool. Where next on your journey?
I think they could stay after retirement. It was still employees only until into the 1980s, then they began selling to others…
The boat is laid up now for the winter. The weather wasn’t getting better (July suuucked) and I had stuff to do back home so I’m actually in Canada again. That’ll be another post!
Beautiful, must be fantastic to see personally! Thanks for the great photos.
Thank you!
So interesting about Port Sunlight! I like the outside loos, and understand there are thousands still in England. I met an older lady many years ago living in London who rented one of the many Council Houses built in 1945 by the government, to help get people into homes after the war. She had an outside loo.
The rent was set and remained artificially low, as long as no structural changes were made to the house. She had modernized the interior, but couldn’t install an inside toilet; a small inconvenience to allow her to keep paying a fraction of what she otherwise would have had to pay if she had given up the house. She never planned to move, and probably died there.
I agree about the weather, Doug. Also, we had to retrace our steps from our original plan to navigate the Leeds and Liverpool, because of broken locks, vandalism, and in some cases, low water. We didn’t want to get stuck!
We cycled up the Narrow Huddersfield Canal to inspect it, but it too, had problems further on so we retraced our steps back to Stenson Marina, where we keep our boat. As we don’t go home until September, we’re heading over to France to visit a cousin and then some villages in the Loire Valley – renting bicycles, then down to Paris for the last few days before heading back on the Eurostar and home.
Next year maybe we’ll get the hot weather over here instead of in Victoria/Sidney!
Cheers,
Hilary and Sandy