AS YOU CROSS Grattan Bridge, leaving behind the bustling atmosphere of Capel St and amble towards Temple Bar, there’s a striking building on the quays of the River Liffey that will stop you in your tracks.
The 4-storey building, adorned with 2 commanding rectangular panel wrapped around its exterior, is intricately detailed with colourful sculptures of horses tilling, countless men, women and children involved in industry, luxurious sheets of cloth drying on a line and much more. When you examine this extraordinary facade closely, you’ll see that the sculptures tell the story of soap production.
The Sunlight Chambers, situated on the corner of Dublin’s Parliament St, is one of the city’s most distinctive and intriguing examples of architecture as it eschewed the typical Georgian and Victorian style for the classical Italiante design. Many Dubliners and tourists have been bedazzled by the remarkable work displayed on Sunlight Chambers exterior, and its fascinating history is revealed in those beautifully carved and painted works.
Why does Dublin’s city centre have a building advertising the process of making soap?
The origins of Dublin’s beloved Sunlight Chambers goes back to two English brothers who made great advancements in the washing detergent industry. William Hesketh Lever and his younger brother James Darcy Lever worked closely with a chemist named William Hough Watson to develop an effective free-lathering soap by substituting tallow, or animal fats, for vegetable oils and glycerin.
The Lever Brothers, who founded their manufacturing business in 1885, decided to invest in Watson’s soap recipe and purchased a factory in Warrington, England to get this innovative product into production. The success of this detergent, which was initially called Honey Soap before being renamed Sunlight Soap.
The Lever Brothers enjoyed great success with Sunlight Soap, within the first 3 years of business, they were producing almost 500 tons a week. This led to them entering new markets and establishing international offices outside of their original Warrington base. A decade after founding the business, they had a modest sales office in New York and gradually opened a manufacturing facility in Massachusetts. By this stage, however, William Hesketh was taking on more responsibilities with the business as his brother reduced his role due to health issues as they prepared to enter the 1900s.
Closer to their primary English manufacturing site, The Lever Brothers found an attractive plot of land by the River Liffey along Essex Quay, which had been developed in the early decades of the 18th century. They acquired this area and enlisted Liverpool-based architect Edward Ould to design the Dublin branch of their detergent factory, which is how the building got the name The Sunlight Chambers.
The vast 4-storey factory was built in 1905 and the sculptor Conrad Dressler was commissioned to create the elaborate facade that gave passersby an insight into the process and use of the Lever Brother’s detergent.
Today, the Sunlight Chambers on the corner of Parliament St and Essex Quay, which received extensive restorations in the 1990s, continues to captivate people walking through the city. While it doesn’t produce Sunlight Soap anymore, it’s still in use as a commercial office.
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