GRAYSON AND OULD,
Architects.
20. A THREE-GABLED GROUP IN NEW CHESTER ROAD.
This element of variety which is so marked in the design of the cottages at Port Sunlight has been obtained without much departure from the genuine English type. Even where a Dutch or Belgian character appears it is carried out with something of the breadth and simplicity which one associates with purely English work. There is very little, if anything, that could be called freakish or odd. The stepped gables or the flamboyant dormers which vary the treatment are not unacceptable as variants. As to the use of oak framing with plaster panels—the familiar Old English style—no one can deny its charm or fail to wish there were even more of it. Nothing is so picturesque and nothing so cheerful of aspect as the black and white work which forms so frequent a feature in the earlier buildings erected. One only regrets that it is difficult to justify it from a strictly commercial point of view, especially if it is executed in a sound and substantial manner. Whether the half-timber work is used for the whole building, or only partially in connection with the fine red sandstone of the district, or with bricks or flint-work, it has an undeniable and enduring charm, and we owe much of our pleasure in the whole appearance of Port Sunlight to the liberal views of the founder, who did not permit his vision of a beautiful village to be obscured by the clouds of philistinism! You cannot, of course, pretend that such gables as those shown in our illustrations are necessary to cottage building. Nor is it surely possible for even a Port Sunlight to be entirely built in such a way; but the pleasure produced by such character of work is, after all, common property, and is a valuable item in regard to the whole scheme.
W. & S. OWEN,
Architects.
21. A PICTURESQUE CORNER IN PARK ROAD SOUTH.
The Plan.
The general plan of Port Sunlight shows now an inhabited area nearly a mile long by nearly half that wide, bounded on the longer sides by the new Chester Road (on the east) and the main railway lines to London, and Greendale Road (on the west). (See No. [39].) There is enough variety of level to avoid the monotony of an entirely flat area, and one piece of natural dell, well grown over with trees and shrubs, forms a delightful feature near the Works end of the village. Goods from the Works are loaded, on the one side, into railway wagons, and on the other into barges on the Bromborough Pool, from which they emerge into the River Mersey. From this pool there used to be gutters or ravines, up which the muddy tidal water flowed right up into where the village now stands, but these have all been cut off from the tide and, with the exception of the dell above referred to, filled up.
