Robert Spear Hudson

In time the factory was too small and too far from the source of his soap so in 1875 he moved his main works to Bank Hall, Liverpool, and his head office to Bootle, while continuing production at West Bromwich.

Eventually the business in Merseyside employed about 1,000 people and Hudson was able to further develop his flourishing export trade to Australia and New Zealand.

[2] The business flourished both because of the rapidly increasing demand for domestic soap products and because of Hudson's unprecedented levels of advertising.

He arranged for striking posters to be produced by professional artists (this was before other firms such as Pears Soap and Lever Brothers used similar techniques).

In 1908 he sold the business to Lever Brothers who ran it as a subsidiary enterprise during which time the soap was manufactured at Crosfield's of Warrington.

[4] Hudson married Mary Bell, a poor farmer girl who made her living selling goats milk to locals, in 1854.

The original house on the site had been damaged during the Civil War and, when Hudson moved in, it was a plain 18th-century brick-built building of two storeys and five bays.

[4] Hudson died unexpectedly of a heart failure in Scarborough in 1884, leaving a personal estate of just under £300,000, a substantial part of which was given to churches and charities.

Financially he supported the newly formed Museum of Science and Art in Chester and the North Wales College Fund.

Moving to Chester, he was soon elected the first Chairman of the North Wales English Congregational Union, a post he held until his death.