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Bound for Port Sunlight

A hair-raising record of the ferry journey across the Mersey Rock to Ferry Quay and on to Port Sunlight by tram.

Non-Fiction 1910 12 mins Silent

Overview

Masterful editing and nifty point of view photography bring vitality and a real sense of immediacy to this, at times hair-raising, record of a journey by ferry across the Mersey Rock to Ferry Quay and on to Port Sunlight by tram. This was no mean feat given the hefty equipment used by cinematographers in 1910. Edwardian audiences would have been on the edge of their seats as pedestrians nonchalantly meander in front of the speeding tram.

The Sunlight soap factory itself is shown as a hive of activity where mixing, checking, cutting, stacking, stamping, and packing are undertaken by men and women with militaristic precision. The vast works and model village with its picturesque half-timber cottages, parks and schools, attracted around 60,000 visitors a year to the Wirral in Cheshire from all corners of the world at the time. The village, built between 1889 and 1914 to house employees, was the brainchild of the Sunlight factory's owner, William Lever (1851-1925), a renowned industrialist with philanthropic tendencies. Today the area is protected as a conservation zone.

Genres

Non-Fiction and Travelogue

Country

United Kingdom

Location

Port Sunlight

Language

No Dialogue with English subtitles

Subjects

Houses Factories Lever Brothers Suburbs School buildings Docks Battleships Housing Office buildings Office workers Ships

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