PORT SUNLIGHT VILLAGE
PORT SUNLIGHT VILLAGE
Congratulations to Port Sunlight Trust for coming SECOND in Civic Award’s competition for the Best Conservation Area in the UK. They were pipped at the post by Swindon Railway Village but still scored over 3000 votes which was a great result and evidence of how popular this great “model village” is with visitors from all over the country.
Port Sunlight was founded in 1888 by William Hesketh Lever for the employees of his Lever Brothers soap works. The village is one of the finest examples of early urban planning in the UK and a forerunner of the Garden City Movement. It is still confined within its original boundaries and was largely complete by the start of the First World War.
The earliest village buildings date from 1889 and all but a few blocks of post Second World War houses were given Grade II listing in 1965 with Conservation Area status following in 1978. The village adopted the character of a Conservation Area from its early days, with Lever’s own interest in historic buildings, tight planning controls and the encouragement of visitors.
Two sections of the village landscape, The Diamond and The Dell are included on Historic England’s Register of Parks and Gardens of special historical interest.
The village is spread over 130 acres, with the groups of individually designed houses spaciously arranged within parkland and set back from broad tree-lined roads.
Open spaces and uniform front gardens are a feature of the village, although the present open character dates from the 1950s when railings that once enclosed the gardens were removed and a more municipal landscape plan was introduced. Many of the public spaces are infilled and landscaped branch channels that once penetrated the site from the River Mersey.
No two blocks of houses are of the same design and nearly every period of British architecture is represented in revival style design. Over thirty different architectural firms worked on designing the houses and Dutch, French and Flemish styles can also be seen. The houses are grouped together in what are known as ‘superblocks’ which all face outwards and contain garage blocks and gardens in the centre.
Port Sunlight contains a wealth of outstanding public buildings, most of which are listed. In the south east corner of the site, Gladstone Hall (1891) was the first principal building in the village, and was opened for use as a men’s dining room by the statesman W. E. Gladstone. On the opposite side of Wood Street is Lever House (1896), the main entrance to the offices of Lever Brothers, now Unilever.
The most well-known public building in the village is the Lady Lever Art Gallery (1922), a classically inspired civic monument clad in white Portland stone which houses William Hesketh Lever’s art collection and is dedicated to the memory of his wife Elizabeth.
Also worthy of note is Christ Church (1904) in the Neo-perpendicular style of Gothic revival. Both Lever and his wife are buried in a narthex attached to the back of the Church beneath effigies by Welsh sculptor Sir William Goscombe John.
Goscombe John also designed the Port Sunlight War Memorial (1921) which sits at the intersection of The Causeway and The Diamond. Taking the theme of ‘The Defence of the home’, the memorial has recently been awarded Grade I listed status.
The village also contains several notable buildings that were built for education or social purposes and which have undergone changes of use over the years: The Lyceum (1896) on Park Road; Hesketh Hall (1903) on Boundary Road; and Hulme Hall (1901) on Bolton Road.
Many prominent architects worked at Port Sunlight, perhaps the most famous being Sir Edwin Luytens (1869 – 1944) who designed one block of cottages at 17 – 23 Corniche Road (1897).
Of the North-West practitioners, the most well-known are John Douglas (1830 – 1911) who designed many buildings in Chester and on the Duke of Westminster’s estate at Eaton; Edward Ould (1852 – 1909) who designed Hamilton Square station and Hillbark House on Wirral; and Edmund Kirby (1838– 1920) who designed many prominent churches and civic buildings on Merseyside.
Lever formed close connections with the Liverpool School of Architecture and helped found the school’s first Chair of Civic Design. The School’s professor Sir Charles Herbert Reilly designed one block of cottages in the village, 15 – 27 Lower Road (1906). Later, when a plan for the completion of the village was required, Lever instigated a competition at the school to find the winning design. The scheme was completed with help from the studio of Thomas Hayton Mawson (1861 – 1933), the most famous landscape architect of his day and a significant influence on Lever’s approach to landscape planning.
Port Sunlight Village Trust is responsible for the conservation and promotion of the village. It invests £2 million each year in maintaining the village’s parkland and gardens, monuments and memorials, the majority of principal buildings, one-third of the houses and in life-long learning programmes through Port Sunlight Museum and its associated events and community initiatives. As a charity, the Trust relies on income from property rentals, museum admission charges, gift shop and tea room sales, grants and donations in order to carry out its charitable mission. To view a map of the Conservation Area click here.
