August 2 - Liverpool, England

 Our tour wasn't until this afternoon, so we had a leisurely morning on board.  We've been here a couple of times before and have seen the things that are closest to the port already.  

The port area is modern in many respects

The building in the forefront with the two towers is the Royal Liver Building (pronounced Lie-ver) which was built by the Royal Liver Assurance Group in 1911.  To the right are two more Edwardian buildings: the Cunard Headquarters and the Port of Liverpool Building. Together they are known as the "Three Graces." 

These are the Unity buildings.  The one on the left is a residential and the right is commercial.  I think the left one is just weird with the box plopped on top.

Not sure what this is, but there were children playing inside on a swing.

We drove a little through Liverpool on our way to our final destination.

This looks like it was built to represent the bow of a ship.  Shipping was a big part of the economy of Liverpool for many years.  And it's still a very active port.

A Japanese artist designed this as a warning against genetic engineering.  This is his representation of what you'd get if you tried to cross a banana with a goat called The Superlambanana.  Say what???  It was originally all yellow, but recieved the blue/yellow makeover in 2023 in support of Ukraine.

A typical street in Liverpool.

Then we were off to Port Sunshine across the Mersey River.  William Lever was the founder of the Lever Brothers soap company.  (There was a brother marginally involved in the early years.)  They became successful with their Sunshine soap, which was "pure", in the late 1800s.  In Victorian times, cleanliness was next to Godliness and he made a fortune off of that.  When he moved his fast-growing factory away from Liverpool, he also built a company village for his workers to live nearby.  But he treated them very well, charging a modest rent and providing all the services they would need like a hospital, activities, schools, churches, etc.  His workers had one of the first pension plans and paid sick time.  He started building it in the 1890s and it grew until the 1920s.  He hired 30 different architects to design the village so that the houses, while being very similar inside with 2 or 3 bedrooms, indoor plumbing and bathrooms, looked different from the outside.  Each had a garden area in front and back and there was lots of open spaces for healthy outside activities.  He was a bit of a health nut himself, sleeping on the outdoor roof deck of his home year-round and having his butler draw a 0-degree bath each morning.  

 

Some of the lovely park areas with houses in the back.  They were all like four-plexes with shared walls.  

Most were brick, but some were stone and even a stucco-like material.

This was once a women's cafeteria, but is now a meeting hall for activities.

He built this monument to the victims of WWI, but he included mothers and children to show that war impacted more than just the soldiers.

There must have been a whole lot of money in that soap because he built homes for his sickly brother and spinster sisters and took care of them.  He traveled the world and collected artworks from everywhere.  He had so much that he built a beautiful museum, the Lady Liver Museum, to hold some of the better pieces.   

This was painted to depict the practice of leaving a goat in the wilderness as a sort of sacrifice.  The legend says: "And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited." (from Leviticus)  The goat is wearing a red ribbon, which signifies the sins of the community and the title of the piece is "Scape Goat."

This is one of only 5 Wedgewood fireplaces ever created.  There are three in this museum.  And the painting above it is estimated to be worth $37 million according to our guide.  The value comes from the way it was "painted" which is that each color was fired on porcelain rather than painted on canvas.  This is one of only three created.  Another one was above one of the other Wedgewood fireplaces.

This is titled "Bubbles".  The boy is holding a bowl of bubble water and watching one above him.  There is a theme of the fragility of life in the broken pot to his left and the very short existence of bubbles themselves.  The boy in the painting (the artist's grandson) grew up to be an Admiral in the Royal Navy and was called Bubbles throughout his life.

This painting, The Black Brunswickers, shows a volunteer soldier going off to fight at Waterloo, where something like 90% of the soldiers died.  Napolean's portrait is in the background and she's wearing a red ribbon, as is the dog, which portends death.  He's reaching for the door to leave and she's trying to hold it closed so he won't leave.  It certainly helps to have a guide to explain these things.

Some of the Chinese art that he collected over the years.

This was a very interesting tour.  Mr. Lever seems like a very generous man so you can't really fault him all of his wealth.  He certainly treated his employees well for the times.  While the factory is still in operation, this is no longer a village just for the workers.  While it seemed lovely to me, our guide said that the houses are rather small for current times, and they're on a historical registry of some kind which means the outsides can't be changed in appearance, so they aren't as popular as they once were.

Next stop was for a lovely cream tea at a nearby church.  A cream tea means a scone with cream and jam and a cup of tea.  I think a high tea is more of the fancy sandwich type.

We didn't get back to the ship until after 6 pm, so it was a quick change before dinner in Compass Rose.  That scone really was more than I needed, so I had the "small" portion of fish and chips and no dessert - a first for this trip!