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The Bolton Prelude to Port Sunlight: W. H. Lever (1851–1925) as Patron and Paternalist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Clyde Binfield
Clyde Binfield*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Sheffield
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Extract

Christ Church United Reformed Church (formerly Congregational), Port Sunlight, and St George’s United Reformed Church (formerly Congregational), Thornton Hough, do not spring to mind as Free Church buildings. There is scarcely one architectural respect in which either announces a Dissenting presence. Each conforms to nationally established tradition. Their quality, however, is as incontestable as it is incontestably derivative. Their role in their respective village-scapes is important, even dominant. As buildings, therefore, they are significant and perhaps suggestive, but do they say anything about ecclesiastical polity? The answer to that question illustrates the interaction between elite and popular religion in Edwardian English Protestant Nonconformity, for the polity to which these two churches give space is in fact successively congregational, Congregational, and Reformed. It is representative throughout but never democratic. Yet can any shade of Congregationalism truly develop in either a squire’s village or a manufacturer’s? And what might be deduced of the man who provided these buildings, created their villages, shaped their communities, and regarded himself lifelong as a Congregationalist even if a masonic lodge were the only fellowship to which he could statedly commit himself? These questions prompt this paper.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 42: Elite and Popular Religion , 2006 , pp. 383 - 393
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2006

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References

1 Thompson, Edward, Introducing the Arnisons (London, 1935), 53 Google Scholar. The best introduction to the model industrial village remains Creese, Walter L., The Search for Environment. The Garden City: Before and After (New Haven, CT, 1966).Google Scholar

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3 Ibid., 59.

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6 Lever, later 1st Viscount Leverkulme of the Western Isles, was Liberal MP Wirral 1906–10; Wedgwood Benn, later 1st Viscount Stansgate, was Liberal MP Tower Hamlets 1906–18, Leith 1918–27; Labour MP Aberdeen North 1928–31, Gorton 1937–42.

7 Lever and Ernest Benn may best be compared in Jeremy, David J. and Shaw, Christine, eds, Dictionary of Business Biography, 5 vols (London, 1985), 1: 280–4 and 3: 745–52.Google Scholar

8 MacDonald, Greville, George MacDonald and His Wife (London, 1924), 210.Google Scholar

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10 Rev. H. A. Hamilton to author, 25 February 1977.

11 For Herbert Alfred Hamilton (1897–1977), minister at Blackburn Road Congregational Church, Bolton 1924–9, Principal Westhill College, Selly Oak, Birmingham 1945–54, see The United Reformed Church Year Book 1979 (London, 1979), 259.

12 For James Lever, see Peaples, F. W., History of the St George’s Road Congregational Churchand its Connections (Bolton, 1913), 107–12 Google Scholar; for Hope Chapel, Albert Place, see ibid., 191–206, esp. 191–4. See also Nightingale, Benjamin, Lancashire Nonconformity: the Churches of Bolton, Bury, Rochdale, etc. (Manchester, 1892), 36.Google Scholar

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14 H. A. Hamilton to author, 25 February 1977; for the Cooper family see Peaples, , History of the St George’s Road, passim, esp. 171–5, 290–6, 302–8 Google Scholar. The Bill Lever story was clearly often told; a version appears in Thompson, Edward, John, Amison (London 1939), 38.Google Scholar

15 H. A. Hamilton to author, 25 February 1977.

16 Ibid.

17 Rev. W.J. Else to author, 27 February 1977.

18 Peaples, , History of the St George’s Road, 323–7.Google Scholar

19 Ibid., 326 and 200–1.

20 Hamilton ministered in Brighton 1954–66; for Charles Berry (1852–99), minister St George’s Road, Bolton, 1875–84, see Drummond, J. S., Charles A. Berry DD: a Memoir (London, 1899).Google Scholar

21 W. Atherton to author, 24 March 1977; interview 10 April 1977; for T. H. Mawson, see his The Life and Work of an English Landscape Architect: an Autobiography [n.d., c.1927]; for the Tillotson family, see Singleton, F., Tillotsons 1850–1950: Centenary of a Family Business (London, 1950).Google Scholar

22 H. A. Hamilton to author, March 1977.