When was bournville village built

When early in the development, George found people were buying up the beautiful arts and crafts homes to sell on for huge profit, he started building homes for rent. Today these homes, amongst many others, are still rented to people on low incomes. In fact, we manage almost 8, houses of mixed tenure in Bournville and other areas of Birmingham and Telford. In , we started to develop a brand new village in Lightmoor, Telford, which once house-building is complete will have 1, homes. While Lightmoor has its own unique sense of place, its management has been influenced by the stewardship of Bournville.

Around 40 acres of land was leased from BVT and by , the Society had built approximately houses. Decades later my sister donned Victorian overalls at Cadbury World , showing tourists and bored schoolchildren how chocolate used to be made, while my brother briefly pushed trollies loaded with ingredients around the factory floor. Bournville was a model village created to house Cadbury workers, although most of the houses are now owned by the Bournville Village Trust rather than the company itself.

My maternal grandparents' house on Bournville Lane, a few hundred yards from the site, is owned by the trust, set up by George Cadbury in to manage much of the land and property surrounding the factory.

My own childhood home two miles away was built at the turn of the last century, and like most of my family I attended the school built by Cadbury so that his workforce could give their children a good education.

Once a week we would march through the imposing steel factory gates on our way to the Cadbury swimming pool. When the wind changed direction, the smell of chocolate wafted over the playground. My mother, who also attended the school, remembers trooping with her classmates to a concert hall once a year to sing to the Cadbury family, and some of the clan's members were still being wheeled out to address pupils when I was there in the s and early 80s.

The Cadbury family's involvement with the company ended long ago, but the paternalism practised by George Cadbury endured long after his death. Even now there are facilities in Bournville that can't be found in neighbouring areas, including the beautiful old cricket pavilion that overlooks the Cadbury playing fields — and the company still pays for their upkeep. The playing fields host a Mayflower festival ever year, and on Christmas Eve the bell carillon in the school bell tower plays O Come All Ye Faithful as 7, people crowd around a huge decorated tree on the green to sing carols.

Such community rituals are unusual in a city that has taken a generation to recover from the deindustrialisation of the s. The local BBC radio station hasn't played an American song all week and although Cadbury employees are reluctant to talk, it is impossible to find anyone who is in favour of the deal. How long before the walls of the "rest house" in the centre of the village green, where mods in parkas used to gather when I was a year-old, is daubed with "Yanks Out" graffiti?

Transport links were good and a source of clean water from the nearby River Bourn was available. They completed the move in September and named it Bournville.

They adopted a French sounding name as France had a good reputation for food, in the hope that their chocolate sales would improve. George Cadbury was appalled at working class living conditions and wanted to provide decent housing for his workers. He planned a model village of well-built cottages with large gardens.

The village would also have spaces for recreation and leisure.