Sunlight Chambers is a listed residential and commercial building on

Bigg Market The Bigg Market is a site of historical significance in Newcastle upon Tyne and dates back to the Middle Ages, when it was the site of a thriving marketplace that formed an important part of the Great North Road. The market was named after a ty ...

Newcastle upon Tyne Newcastle upon Tyne ( RP: , ), or simply Newcastle, is a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England. The city is located on the River Tyne's northern bank and forms the largest part of the Tyneside built-up area. Newcastle is ...

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

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

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 (), also called glycerine in British English and glycerin in American English, is a simple triol compound. It is a colorless, odorless, viscous liquid that is sweet-tasting and non-toxic. The glycerol backbone is found in lipids known ...

and vegetable oils such as

palm oil Palm oil is an edible vegetable oil derived from the mesocarp (reddish pulp) of the fruit of the oil palms. The oil is used in food manufacturing, in beauty products, and as biofuel. Palm oil accounted for about 33% of global oils produced from ...

instead of

tallow Tallow is a rendering (industrial), rendered form of beef or mutton fat, primarily made up of triglycerides. In industry, tallow is not strictly defined as beef or mutton fat. In this context, tallow is animal fat that conforms to certain techn ...

. The resulting soap was free-lathering. At first, it was named Honey Soap but later became " Sunlight Soap".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 sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates) ...

ashlar Ashlar () is finely dressed (cut, worked) stone, either an individual stone that has been worked until squared, or a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, generally rectangular cuboid, mentioned by Vitruv ...

. 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 pitched roof. A dormer window (also called ''dormer'') is a form of roof window. Dormers are commonly used to increase the usable space ...

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 drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian R ...

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