Port Sunlight

Authors Avatar

Port Sunlight

In the context of the Victorian era, in which it was conceived, the creation of Port Sunlight Village by William Hesketh Lever was unparalleled. The tumultuous changes wreaked by the Industrial Revolution still had not been fully embraced even as late as the early twentieth century.

The combination of a content, healthy and efficient workforce was a vision held by some philosophers and luminaries of the time but Lever was one of the first entrepreneurs to realise such a dream. From his middle-class upbringing in Bolton, Lancashire to his ambitious trips around the world, Lever employed lessons learned to good effect in housing and employing the workforce of his soap business.

Lever, like many Victorians, wanted his workers to share in his wealth which they had helped create. The squalor of the slums in which most workers lived appalled him and his guiding philosophy was that all men could improve themselves given a fair chance, in decent conditions. Tired of paying heavy port dues for his exports and rent for his factory buildings, he decided to buy a site and build his own factory, with port access and decent housing for his workers at reasonable rents. He would provide them with schools, library, institutes and public buildings which they could use to improve themselves as he had done. In return, they were to prove themselves worthy of all this by following a life of sobriety, thrift and the desire for self-improvement. So was founded Port Sunlight, a model village "neat and cheerful" which fulfilled Lever's desire to share his profits with his workers and combined with his interests in housing reform.

Join now!

Modern plumbing was essentially a Victorian invention. Improved building methods and the availability of cheaper building materials coming from transport improvements assisted those who fought for better housing conditions for the urban poor. The Garden Suburb Movement, another development for the improvement of cities strove to provide better housing but for this to be provided in aesthetically pleasing styles in leafy, sylvan surroundings

Lever was born into this era of social inequality, self-interest and free enterprise balanced by philanthropists, social reformers and self-help moralists. William Lever was a product of this age, who, when he himself became an industrialist, set ...

This is a preview of the whole essay