Leverhulme

The Purpose

Leverhulme started with the 1st Viscount Leverhulme and his vision to enhance lives through opportunity. Leverhulme applies that same sense of purpose to its responsibility today for its many places throughout the UK.

    The 1st Viscount Leverhulme built a global business dispensing widely accessible household products that not only enhanced living standards through convenience but enrichment through prosperity and time. This also enabled him to pursue his passion for place and community by creating the model village of Port Sunlight over 130 years ago and, today, Leverhulme is the custodian of land in Wirral, Merseyside, Cheshire, Shropshire and Scotland.

    Today’s Leverhulme encompasses diverse places hosting farms, homes, commercial businesses, as well as natural habitats, sporting, leisure and tourism attractions. Most of all, our places strive to support dynamic, sustainable communities which recognise our past and deliver for the future.

    The Leverhulme Purpose is to create environments where people can live happy, healthy and fulfilled lives.

    “Lever was passionate about the welfare of his workforce and that everyone should have a home and workplace where they are not just safe and comfortable but can enrich their lives.”
    “Creating environments where people can live happy, healthy and fulfilled lives.”

    Where It All Began

    Leverhulme, from its very beginning, has been focussed on enhancing people’s lives.

    Along with his brother James Darcy Lever, William Hesketh Lever (later to become the 1st Viscount) established the business of Lever Brothers in 1885, manufacturing Sunlight Soap in Warrington. Today that business is a founding part of the British multinational consumer goods company Unilever.

    Needing more space to meet burgeoning demand, in 1888 the brothers began construction of a new factory at ‘Port Sunlight’.

    Over the next 30 years William Lever took a progressive approach to his growing business, building an aspirational model village at Port Sunlight to host his workforce.

    In total, he built some 900 houses, together with an assortment of public buildings including Christ Church, two schools, a hospital, the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Hulme Hall, Gladstone Hall, a gymnasium, a heated outdoor swimming pool, various clubs, and several bowling greens.

    Lever was passionate about the welfare of his workforce and that everyone should have a home and workplace where they were not just safe and comfortable but could enrich their lives.

    Through the success of his business, Lever was able to transform the living standards for his workforce and the wider local communities.

    Inspiring design, gardens, connectivity, open green space and sense of community were the fabric of his vision as he created Port Sunlight and, in time, other parts of Wirral including Thornton Hough, Brimstage, Raby and Storeton.

    These priorities remain as Leverhulme’s impact continues to resonate through Unilever, through the Wirral Estate and through the estates of Altcar, Alpraham and Badanloch, which were acquired, developed and nurtured most recently by the last Lord Leverhulme, his grandson Philip (3rd Viscount).

    Leverhulme Today

    Today, Leverhulme’s places provide for homes, businesses, leisure and tourism, as well as producing food and the stewardship of valuable natural assets and habitats.

    A growing population, evolving living needs and the fight against the impact of climate change are some of the current challenges facing all of us.

    We recognise the responsibility for our places through how we meet people’s needs, manage our built environment and nurture the health of our natural environment.

    Sustainability in our actions has never been
    more important and, whatever we do, we must strive to meet the requirements of today without compromising the needs of tomorrow.

    We best achieve this through living out the purpose that started with the 1st Viscount and by identifying the opportunity within the Triple Bottom Line philosophy of People, Planet and Prosperity.

    We strive to enable:

    • People to have homes that can meet their changing needs, opportunity for businesses and their employees and environments that enhance wellbeing, health and leisure.

    • Our natural resources to support and contribute deeply towards our Planet, aided further by harnessing renewable energy sources and the efficiency of our built environment.

    • Local economic growth with diversity of outputs across our places, enhancing Prosperity
      for everyone and creating value through quality.

    “Sustainability in our actions has never been more important and, whatever we do, we must strive to meet the requirements of today without compromising the needs of tomorrow.”