the avanti group
In the latest of our series commemorating the life and work of people honoured with blue plaques, Adam Sonin explores the fascinating history of soap
manufacturer and philanthropist William Lever.
Soap-boiler, social reformer, MP, tribal chieftain, multi-millionaire and Lord of the Western Isles. He employed workmen from the Mersey to the Congo and
they all called him ‘Chief’. His peers knew him as William Lever, later to become first Viscount Leverhulme.
When he was made a Baronet in 1911 he chose the motto Mutare Vel Timere Sperno: “I spurn to change or fear.” Throughout his life his favourite novel was
Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield (1850). He owned a string of grand houses packed full of antiques, artworks and treasures, all “guarded” by tiger-skin
rugs.
He was known to often sleep outdoors, in all weathers, and on a simple iron bed. Evelyn Waugh, a near neighbour, described his house, then under
construction, as “Italianite”. His model village, Port Sunlight, near his soapworks in Birkenhead, ranks alongside Henrietta Barnett’s Hampstead Garden
Suburb as one of England’s great experiments in town planning. Barnett was also a near neighbour.
The food manufacturer, Sir Angus Watson (1874–1961), described him as “thickset in stature, with a sturdy body set on short legs and a massive head
covered with thick, upstanding hair, he radiated force and energy”. Sir Angus continued: “He had piercing, blue-grey eyes which, however, flashed with
challenge when he was angry,” and “the short neck and closely-set ears of a prize-fighter”.
