Port Sunlight

I couldn’t really account for the fact that I’d never had a good look round Port Sunlight before now, but there you are, we were here at last. It is, of course, renowned in some quarters as the model garden village constructed for the factory workers in his soap manufacturing business by William Hesketh Lever and begun in 1888. At the heart of the estate today is the classically-styled Lady Lever Art Gallery with its collection of pre-Raphaelite paintings. The museum opposite tells the story of the settlement, though this was unfortunately closed on the day that we visited. The Lever Brothers building, itself, has an impressive stone façade from 1895, and nearby is the Gladstone Theatre of 1891, opened by Prime Minister, William Ewart Gladstone, firstly as a dining hall.

Of interest, too, is the station, which has a cottage-style exterior in keeping with its surroundings. The station is on the ex-LNWR/GWR Joint line from Birkenhead, a route we travelled along on trainspotting forays to Chester, Crewe and Shrewsbury. We must have sped through Port Sunlight on the Paddington expresses many a time, without giving it so much as a second glance. This section is now part of the electrified Merseyrail network that connects Chester to the Wirral and Liverpool. It is operated by four-car Class 777 third rail EMUs.