PORT SUNLIGHT

PORT SUNLIGHT
A RECORD OF
ITS ARTISTIC & PICTORIAL ASPECT
BY T·RAFFLES DAVISON Hon. A·R·I·B·A
LONDON
B·T·BATSFORD L^TD 94 HIGH HOLBORN

PREFACE.

Everyone has heard of Port Sunlight, but it is doubtful whether many have formed a definite or just estimate of this unique example of industrial housing. The following pages are an attempt to record its best features and to show how far the ideal which inspired it has succeeded. To those who have not seen it Port Sunlight is perhaps regarded as one of many other similar places. It is in reality something very different from all others, and especially does it stand by itself in the motive which founded it, which has carried it out, and which continues to administrate it. The breadth of vision which has made Port Sunlight possible is perhaps a greater matter than the village itself. This must inevitably have its effect, but the author ventures to predict that the artistic aspect of the place, which receives some permanent record herein, may also obtain full recognition and emulation as time goes on.

Those who look for finality in any human accomplishment are doomed to disappointment, but the measure of our success will surely be in proportion to the quality of our aims. The last and best word we can say about the village of Port Sunlight is that the aim of its founder has been based on the belief that sympathy for the wants and well-being of our fellow-men may find a large expression even in our business dealings.

It is very delightful to contemplate the results of an undertaking like Port Sunlight—a beneficent enterprise which no law could force from any public body or private employer, and which no mere compiler of accounts for capital and interest would dare to sanction. The ideal which prompted it is the real thing that matters, and though it may be maintained that the carrying out of it pays—and pays well—we may still hold fast to the hope that both those who make such villages and those who live in them will ever cherish some beliefs which are above and beyond all that which is concerned with a mere monetary return. How fortunate the workpeople who are enabled to live under such ideal conditions!

This little book is entirely due to the desire of the author himself to illustrate the results of an enterprise which he has closely followed from its inception. The combination of the practical and the artistic has been achieved in Port Sunlight with outstanding success, and in these pages it is believed that this is fairly shown, though the building record is not yet by any means complete.

It would be the merest affectation to leave out of these pages any mention of the founder, Sir William Hesketh Lever, Bart., one of the leaders of industrial enterprise in this country. Amongst the many things he has done for the benefit of his fellow-countrymen there is surely nothing we have more to thank him for than the homes which are the subject of this book. To provide employment for thousands and then to give them such homes to live in must be a good reward for a life’s work to the man with an ideal.