War Memorial

Port Sunlight is the site of a soap factory founded by William Lever (1851–1925), later 1st Viscount Leverhulme, who also created a model village for his workers. During the First World War Lever was chairman of the Empire War Memorial League, and was anxious to have a war memorial in Port Sunlight. He was concerned that at the end of the war the best sculptors would have been engaged to work on war memorials, and as early as 1916 he commissioned Goscombe John to design a memorial for the village. Lever had been concerned that England would be invaded and at the start of the First World War, although he was then aged 63, he joined the Birkenhead and District Volunteer Training Corps (the…

The memorial stands in the most prominent position in the centre of the village, at the intersection of its broadest avenues, The Causeway and The Diamond. It is made in granite, with sculptures and reliefs in bronze. At the centre is a runic cross. This stands on an octagonal plinth, on which are the statues of eleven figures. There are inscriptions on the sides of the plinth. Around the plinth is an enclosure with four seating areas, and it is surrounded by a circular parapet. The parapet is broken by four flights of steps. Flanking the tops of the steps are reliefs of groups of children holding wreathes; all the reliefs are different. On each of the four sections of the parapet facing…