Property News · July 11, 2014

Let's move to Port Sunlight, Cheshire


Built to house Lever Brothers’ factory workers, this Victorian model village is still a paradise today – it even has a pubWhat’s going for it? Port Sunlight is paradise on Earth, with persistent rain showers. Imagine being a slum-dweller in 1880s Salford and getting a job boiling up vats of soap in the Lever Brothers’ factory, swapping your overcrowded hovel for… what would you like? Tudorbethan cottage? Renaissance Dutch semi? Or would Palladian revival do? Anyone lucky enough to get a golden ticket to reside in this workers’ playground must have thought they’d died and gone to heaven. Each of the 900 homes is unique in style and set on blossoming boulevards amid every possible convenience, as useful today as they were 130 years ago – swimming pool, art gallery, night school, cottage hospital, even, goodness, a pub (a rare sight in Victorian philanthropic utopias). It remains a lovely, if slightly odd place. There was a price for entry: strict rules on gambling, naughtiness and the correct height of dado rails, and woe betide you if the Levers’ random house inspections found a poker out of place. Don’t think they’ve stopped, either. Crack teams of enforcement officers/Hyacinth Buckets are regularly deployed from the museum tea rooms to monitor your rag rolling.The case against A little odd, being, effectively, an architectural theme park. A tad too perfect: you might hanker after litter and graffiti. Quiet, even on a suburban scale. You’ll struggle to find large houses. Continue reading…

Source : theguardian.com
Read more…Let’s move to Port Sunlight, Cheshire

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