Sunlight Chambers is a listed residential and commercial building on Bigg Market in

Newcastle upon Tyne Newcastle upon Tyne, or simply Newcastle ( , Received Pronunciation, RP: ), is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England. It is England's northernmost metropolitan borough, located o ...

. It was designed by architects William & Segar Owen in a modified

Baroque The Baroque ( , , ) is a Western Style (visual arts), style of Baroque architecture, architecture, Baroque music, music, Baroque dance, dance, Baroque painting, painting, Baroque sculpture, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished from ...

style and was named after Lever Brothers' Sunlight detergent brand.

History

Lever Brothers was founded in 1895 by brothers William Hesketh Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme (1851–1925), and James Darcy Lever (1854–1916). Together with chemist William Hough, the brothers created a soap that used

glycerin Glycerol () is a simple triol compound. It is a colorless, odorless, sweet-tasting, viscous liquid. The glycerol backbone is found in lipids known as glycerides. It is also widely used as a sweetener in the food industry and as a humectant in pha ...

and vegetable oils such as

palm oil Palm oil is an edible vegetable oil derived from the mesocarp (reddish pulp) of the fruit of oil palms. The oil is used in food manufacturing, in beauty products, and as biofuel. Palm oil accounted for about 36% of global oils produced from o ...

instead of

tallow Tallow is a rendered form of beef or mutton suet, primarily made up of triglycerides. In industry, tallow is not strictly defined as beef or mutton suet. In this context, tallow is animal fat that conforms to certain technical criteria, inc ...

. The resulting soap was free-lathering. At first, it was named Honey Soap but later became "

Sunlight Soap Sunlight is a brand of laundry soap, laundry detergent and dishwashing detergent manufactured and marketed around the world by Unilever, except in the United States and Canada, where it has been owned by Sun Products (now Henkel Corporati ...

".Jeannifer Filly Sumayku, , ''The President Post, 22 March 2010'' In 1901, the brothers hired architects William & Segar Owen to design a building for the Newcastle branch of their company. It was constructed between 1901 and 1902 and was named after Lever Brothers' then-famous soap brand.

Design

The building is constructed in a modified Baroque style using

sandstone Sandstone is a Clastic rock#Sedimentary clastic rocks, clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of grain size, sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate mineral, silicate grains, Cementation (geology), cemented together by another mineral. Sand ...

ashlar Ashlar () is a cut and dressed rock (geology), stone, worked using a chisel to achieve a specific form, typically rectangular in shape. The term can also refer to a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, a ...

. The building features a frieze depicting harvest and industry. Its roof consists of French tiles and its architrave-featuring windows are

dormer A dormer is a roofed structure, often containing a window, that projects vertically beyond the plane of a Roof pitch, pitched roof. A dormer window (also called ''dormer'') is a form of roof window. Dormers are commonly used to increase the ...

at roof level.

Sister building in Dublin

At almost the same time, Lever Brothers built a branch in Dublin, which they also called Sunlight Chambers. Although the Irish building was designed in an

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style combined its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century It ...

style{{cite web , url=https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/50020001/sunlight-chambers-20-21-parliament-street-essex-quay-dublin-2-dublin , title=Sunlight Chambers, 20-21 Parliament Street, Essex Quay, Dublin 2, DUBLIN rather than a Baroque style, both Sunlight Chambers feature a characteristic circumferential frieze.

References

Arts centres in England Culture in Newcastle upon Tyne Buildings and structures in Newcastle upon Tyne Tourist attractions in Newcastle upon Tyne 1902 establishments in England

History

Design

Sister building in Dublin

See also

References