Gradually women's and men's swimming pools were built and every young boy and girl joining the company was encouraged to become a good swimmer. Work outings to the country were organised together with summer camps for the young boys. Morning prayers and daily bible readings, first started in , helped preserve the family atmosphere and continued for another 50 years, until the workforce grew too large for such an assembly.
Cadbury duly became famous not just for its prosperity, but also for the advances in conditions and social benefits for its workforce. George Cadbury had already created some houses for key workers when the Bournville factory was built. Then, in , he bought another acres near the works and started to build houses in line with the ideals of the embryonic Garden City movement. George's wife, Dame Elizabeth Cadbury, planned Bournville Village alongside her husband, and her memoirs tell us how these plans became reality.
Many of the first tenants were men in Mr Cadbury's Adult School Class, who had previously lived in the centre of Birmingham without gardens.
Now they enjoyed healthy surroundings and cultivated their gardens, many with their own apple trees. George Cadbury decided not to go for tunnel-backs because it limited the amount of light in the houses. Instead he chose rectangular cottages, each one with a large garden. In , cottages were built on the land he had bought privately, a total of acres.
When building started at Bournville, the basic house type built in the Midlands was the 'tunnel-back'. In this section You are here: History The estate Expansion of the area Associations The collection History In George and Richard Cadbury, makers of chocolate and cocoa moved their factory from the city centre to the healthier environment of the countryside.
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Social Links. The first of these was, on Leontan thaet cume on Blacan Mere : 'from the River Leontan to where it ie. The Leontan is a lost river name and may refer to either the Bourn or the Rea. There is confusion over the name Bournbrook. However, the stream here is now called the Bourn, while a stream running east-west north of here is now called Bournbrook.
The 18th-century Bournbrook Hall stood on a rising hill across Bournville Lane from the Cadbury factory and overlooked the valley of the Bourne. This small stream runs west to east through the factory site. The hall was a large 3-storey building built in a neo-classical style with extensive grounds which were bought by Cadburys and the hall was subsequently demolished. Formerly Bournbrook Hall Farm, it was part of the Bournbrook Hall estate until the Cadburys bought the land some time after By that time the farmhouse had become a cider house, The Old Farm Inn.
The Cadburys were Quakers who would not tolerate alcohol on their property, so the inn was closed. However, it is reputed that they did take on the landlady to work as a tea lady in the dining room of the new factory.
This is one of the city's designated Conservation Areas. In the Cadbury brothers built sixteen cottages for key workers on Bournville Lane adjacent to their new factory - this is now the site of the factory dining rooms. With the factory established, George Cadbury turned his attention to housing more of his workforce. In he set up a spacious building estate to lease well-built houses to working people. These were restored in The houses here were set back by front gardens and had generous rear vegetable gardens.
The roads of the estate were lined with trees. Cadbury wanted to give workers a better environment than the slums of the town centre and to avoid the speculative overcrowding that was beginning to take place in nearby Selly Oak. The present church, a Grade II Listed building designed by Harvey, is a red-brick romanesque-style building which was consecrated in , the first church to be built in Birmingham after World War 1. The loss is felt more acutely locally because of the rollcall of well-known brands that have already closed or moved away, including Dunlop, HP Sauce and MG Rover, whose Longbridge base was just three miles away.
The area is predominantly white, although the mixed workforce includes Polish workers. The trust, which handles a huge waiting list for its affordable homes where rents are low, hands out a significant number to single mothers and families on low incomes.
There is no poverty, but there are few signs of ostentatious wealth in a place that comes close to capturing the essence of that elusive phrase, "middle England". Some might find it dull, but for most people it is simply a good place to bring up a family.
For me, its a pity Cadbury is likely to fall into foreign hands, although in some ways it hardly matters whether the company is owned by shareholders on Wall Street or in the City of London. The bell tower and the cricket square will survive if the factory disappears and so too, I suspect, will the very English ambience. Bournville: the town that chocolate built. James Robinson's family lived and worked in the shadow of the Cadbury factory.
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