THE PORT SUNLIGHT PROBLEM

Port Sunlight station is located on what is now part of the Merseyrail network in the Wirral Peninsula, formerly in Cheshire. It is surrounded by hamlets and villages with names ending in the Saxon ‘ton’ and ‘ham’ such as Bebington and Eastham. If you use a source book such as Kenneth Cameron’s English Place Names you will not find a reference to Port Sunlight as it only dates back just over 120 years to when a certain W. H. Lever, later to become better known as the first Viscount Leverhulme, decided to found a soap works in Wirral close to the banks of the River Mersey.

It was on 3rd March 1888 that William Hesketh Lever, his wife and entourage travelled from Liverpool on a steam barge, the Warrington, to a small stone quay at the side of a muddy inlet on the south west bank of the River Mersey. Later the same day, at a small ceremony, the first sod was raised to start the construction of what became a world-famous soap factory. Later the same year the factory became rail connected to the dual track Birkenhead and Chester line, which was jointly operated by the Great Western and London & North Western Railway Companies which was approaching the 50th anniversary of its opening. The factory, the adjacent industrial village, the siding and the soon-to-be constructed station all assumed the name of ‘Port Sunlight’.

The route between Birkenhead and Chester was not the first line of rails to be constructed in what became the Port Sunlight district. This honour belonged to an earlier line, known as Sir William Stanley’s Railway, or more commonly ‘The Storeton Tramway’, which was opened, amidst great ceremony, on 15th August 1838. It was about 2½ miles long and linked the sandstone quarries on Storeton Hill with the Mersey at the quay used by Mr. Lever. These quarries provided a ‘springboard’ for the career of Thomas Brassey, who was managing the quarries at the time when Stephenson was looking for good quality stone in connection with the building of the Liverpool & Manchester