Analemmatic Sundial

No watch or mobile phone and wondering if the Lady Lever Art Gallery pictured in the distance will be open yet?  No problem. At ones feet is an Analemmatic Sundial.  Stand on the appropriate month on the marked

  indentation and a shadow will be cast across an hour pillar.  The inner circle is British Summer Time and the outer circle is winter's Greenwich Mean Time.  This analemmatic sundial was installed for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in 2012 at Port Sunlight on the Wirral and was, I thought, the first I had seen, although that was not true, it was just that I didn't know they had a name.  Here is my assistant demonstrating the one near the Houses of Parliament in London 

 where his shadow tells us it is 11 O'clock (my camera's date stamp may be a little more precise at 11:30).  

An explanation of the word Anelemmatic without any bamboozling mathematics:

 "The more common sort of sundial has an angled post (usually called the gnomon, or sometimes the style) which casts a shadow on a circular dial. Its analemmatic cousin, on the other hand, has a vertical gnomon, which casts a shadow on an elliptical scale. For it to tell the time with adequate accuracy (you may recall Hilaire Belloc’s verse complaint: “I am a sundial, and I make a botch, of what is done much better by a watch”), the gnomon must first be moved to the correct position along a north-south axis according to the season. Though a small sundial of this type is rather fiddly to make and use, large ones laid out on a flat area permit a person to act as the gnomon (my local one is of this sort). Earnest enquirers after chronological intelligence then need only position themselves at the appropriate spot along the axis for the time of year and — weather permitting — they can then read off the time by noting where their shadow falls on the scale".  Source: World Wide Words

 An entry to ABC Wednesday, starting another journey through the alphabet here

Port Sunlight

One of the finest surviving industrial garden villages in the UK is that of Port Sunlight. Founded in 1888 by William Hesketh Lever, the "soap king"  its location the result of him looking for somewhere to build a new soap works and house his employees. At that time this area on the Wirral was marshy farmland and tidal creeks but Lever saw its both as a potential source of labour and also good connections by road and rail.

Although Lever made his fortune by manufacturing soap he would have loved to be an architect so he wanted his workers village to be a pleasant place to live and be of the finest of the architecture of the time. In this pursuit he employed over a dozen different architectural practices.

One of which was his godson James Lomax-Simpson who built the houses along the long and extensive  King George's Dive here.  The timber frame house on the left of this photograph is now a holiday home.

At the end of the drive is the Art Gallery which houses Lever's huge collection of pottery, paintings and furniture. He collected so much he ran out of room in all his houses.  The gallery was built in memory of his adored wife, Elizabeth,  Lady Lever (who died in 1913) who he called his "better three-quarters".

They lie together in the churchyard of the church which was built for all denominations. The signpost outside the mausoleum is just a simple sign that says "The Founder".  When Lever was knighted he became Lord Leverhulme, which was the combination of their two surnames (Lever and Hulme).

Lever's social and romantic ideals makes the village an unique place.  The health and education of the workers at the time was far superior to those in the nearby cities. The external look of the village has been preserved since the death of Lever in 1925. Set in 130 acres of parkland there are over 900 houses and 12 public buildings now looked after by the Port Sunlight Trust.

The present home of the NatWest Bank was the Girls' Hostel (built 1896) originally built as a a hostel for the female employees travelling from Liverpool.

What I liked about the village was the variety of architecture, as can be seen at the time it was built there was much influence from of the Arts and Crafts Movement.

Alas although I can show some of the housing styles I can't show the Port Sunlight Swimming Pool which was an open-air pool and, like the majority of them in the UK, it does not survive.  I am told by someone who was born, married and lives in the village it was wonderfully place to swim as it was heated by underground pipes from the Glycerine Works in the factory .

So there you have it, a village built on soap.  Lever was famous for his use of advertising and spent millions. His famous quote is as true today as it was in the 19th century "I know half my advertising isn't working, I just don't know which half"

An entry to ABC Wednesday, a journey through the alphabet this week sojourning at P here