October, 19(^7 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



395 



Port Sunlight 



A Significant English Experiment in Village Building 



By Mabel Tuke Priestman 



HE village of Port Sunlight occupies an 

 area of one hundred and forty acres, to- 

 gether with ninety acres devoted to the 

 buildings of the business for which it was 

 created. It is located about five miles from 

 Birkenhead and seven miles across the river 

 from Liverpool. 

 How best to make the village beautiful has been the sub- 

 ject of careful consideration, and no dump heaps have been 

 allowed to mar the beauty of the landscape. When the estate 

 was laid out gutters 

 were filled up and 

 the land leveled at 

 the bottom of the 

 ravines until they 

 were raised above 

 the high water 

 mark. These ra- 

 vines are being 

 made into parks and 

 recreation grounds, 

 and are becoming 

 the feature of t h e 

 village. The land 

 occupied by ravines 

 consists of twenty- 

 five acres. 



At the junction 

 of Bromborough Pool a dam is in course of construction 

 which will cut these parks off from the incoming tide, and 

 also serve to carry a road at that point across the pool. The 

 direct and shortest ways to important points — such as the 

 railway station, the ferry, the car terminus and the roads to 

 the office and works — are planned in the most direct and 

 shortest route, but wherever possible they have curves and 



A Street from Without 



sweeps following the lines of the ravines, giving a picturesque 

 quality to the village only obtainable by such methods. An- 

 other plan for civic betterment has been thought of in the 

 laying out of the village; that is, none of the houses have 

 their backs to the railway line. We are only too familiar 

 with the miserable surroundings of most railways near large 

 factories, not to appreciate what this alone means in beauti- 

 fying Port Sunlight. 



The roads are of excellent proportion, being forty feet 

 wide, the majority having eight yards of roadway and eight 



feet each for foot- 

 paths. A few of 

 the widest roads 

 have twelve yards 

 for roadway and 

 twelve feet for 

 pavements. 



Several of the ra- 

 vines are spanned 

 by well designed 

 bridges, which are 

 distinctive features. 



Another interest- 

 ing feature is t h e 

 open-air theater, sit- 

 uated in Dell Park. 

 The fresh green 

 sward of the park is 

 It has a seating ac- 

 The entire 



pleasingly broken by red gravel paths, 

 commodation of two thousand four hundred, 

 floor has been cemented, a most necessary precaution in the 

 damp climate of England. The natural slope of the banks 

 of the ravine has lent itself admirably to the arrangement 

 of seats raised one above the other, on the classic lines of 

 the Colosseum. 



Shingled and Hatf-timbered Cottages 



