Chocolate and Paradise: an Analyzation of George Cadbury’S Bournville Model Village LEWIS CLEGG

69 Chocolate and Paradise: An Analyzation of George Cadbury’s Bournville Model Village LEWIS CLEGG Cadbury chocolate is one of Britain’s most famous and popular treats. Besides the chocolate, the Cadbury family are famous for their development of Bournville, a model village on the outskirts of Birmingham, England. Bournville Works, the new Cadbury factory established in 1879, became surrounded by housing, entertainment, and transportation networks, establishing a new model village that was the Cadbury family’s response to the growing poverty rate in Victorian England.1 This is a great idea on the surface, especially in the heart of the Victorian era, however, there is more beyond this “accepted history” or narrative that Bournville was a model village for working-class Victorian England. There are many great elements of Bournville, but it is not as astonishing as it might seem once a thorough critique and examination is conducted. This is the aim of this paper. I seek to challenge many elements of the accepted history of Bournville and the notion that is was a remarkable model village. Bournville may have been marketed this way to counter the ills of overcrowded and unsanitary Victorian cities, but a critical examination highlights that it was a critique of working-class lifestyles, and one that George Cadbury believed could be reformed with social engineering based on Quaker ideals. This paper will explore the history of the Bournville village, while also critiquing some of the positive and negative elements of such a settlement. This paper also calls for further research on the topic. Firstly, John Cadbury’s growing business was taken over by his two sons, George and Richard in 1861, who needed a new desirable location to allow for further expansion. Since the company was reliant on the canal system for milk delivery and railways for the import of cocoa from major port cities, a site with easy access to both of these modes of transportation was key. After scouting for locations, the brothers came across an open area four miles from Birmingham’s industrial centre. The brothers were enthralled with the location and moved their business here in 1879, with the opening of a new factory. The move was a risky business decision but provided many positive elements. Another major positive of the location was the development of the Birmingham West Suburban Railway, which was located close to a canal and connected this location to central Birmingham. The site was close to key transportation networks for imports, provided open space in case of future expansion, and was regarded as a much healthier and cleaner alternative to the polluted city.2 This latter point was becoming more apparent in the later 1 Catherine Higgs, Chocolate Islands: Cocoa, Slavery, and Colonial Africa, (Athens: Ohio, University, Press, 2012): 2-3. 2 Nigel Dawkins, “History of Bournville,” September 26, 2015, Bournville Village Council, Retrieved from, http://bournvillevillagecouncil.org.uk/menu-pages/history-of-bournville.html, para. 3-4. 70 Victorian era, as citizens were beginning to take notice of the dirty and overcrowded cities. There were often class connotations associated with these critiques however, with the working classes taking the brunt of the criticism. The cities had once been the promise of a better life in Britain and escape from the misery of rural lifestyles, with higher wages and an abundance of jobs during the expansion of industry in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.3 Now the opposing view was held by the Cadbury brothers, who felt the open and vast countryside could benefit the company economically and its workers. George and Richard Cadbury were correct in their gamble to move their business from Birmingham’s central industrial hub to the countryside, at least economically. Business began to increase, in large part due the railway network being able to transport in daily labour. The Cadbury brothers decided to make use of their fifteen-acre property and built sixteen semidetached homes to house many of the 300 workers. There was also a football and cricket pitch provided, as well as a female playground. The facilities were very gendered and class structured however. Males were able to engage in their social spaces of “manly” sports like football and cricket quite openly. Meanwhile, the females were reserved to the private sphere, as cooking facilities were built. The only acceptable public space for females was their playground, which was a much smaller space and adjoined to the factory.4 In terms of class structure, these early houses were designed for senior foreman and their families. These middle-class families were able to live on sight and enjoy the healthy benefits and open fields of the countryside. Meanwhile, the rest of the employees had to commute from the overcrowded and unsanitary sections of Birmingham. To be fair to the Cadbury brothers though, they did negotiate cheap fares with the railway company to make it more affordable for their employees. Another issue arose though, when the railways did not run at convenient times. The factory had to open at six o’clock some days, which required employees to walk four miles from central Birmingham, before working a full day of physical labour, although in much better working conditions than before.5 The idea of Bournville as a model Victorian village had not been coined yet, and these gendered and class structured spaces were seen across most of Victorian Britain, so these developments were no different than other elements of the time. These further insights highlight that Bournville was a strong move economically, but problematic for the majority of the working-class employees and the concept of Bournville being an ideal model village in Victorian Britain. As business began to surge, the factory began to expand. The brothers were able to change the British chocolate market significantly with their brilliant innovations and manufacturing techniques. On George Cadbury’s travels to the Netherlands in the 1860’s, he came across a press machine that significantly reduced the high fat content of cocoa and made it more desirable to eat. He was able to negotiate a deal for this press and brought it back to Birmingham. The brothers used this tool to their advantage and focused more on marketing eatable chocolate. This was what 3 Bournville Village Trust, 2010, “The Bournville Story,” Bournville Village Trust: 2. 4 Gordan E. Cherry, 1996, “Bournville, England: 1895-1995,” Journal of Urban History, no. 4: 494-495. 5 John R. Bryson and Philippa A. Lowe, 2002, “Regular Articles: Story-Telling and History Construction: Rereading George Cadbury’s Bournville Model Village,” Journal of Historical Geography 28 (January): 27-28. 71 allowed their business to grow and expand to Bournville initially.6 The move allowed the company to produce more eatable chocolate and reach more British markets. Cocoa manufacturing became even more diversified, when the integration of milk led to an early form of Cadbury’s famous and widespread popular “dairy milk” bar in the twentieth century.7 Connecting back to Bournville, these successful business and manufacturing practices allowed the Cadbury company to hire more workers with the expansion of the factory. This is when George took the lead, with his idea of making Bournville a model village in 1893 and a way to counter the slums of inner Birmingham, characterized by overcrowded living conditions and poor sanitation. There was a major shortage of available housing within Birmingham and the prices were well out of the range of most working-class families. From the 1860’s onwards, measures were enacted to try and overcome some of the sanitary deficiencies in British cities with new public health regulations, but they were limited in action. George Cadbury marketed that his idea was great for “the community at large, not just for workers at his factory”.8 George wanted his workers to live in a welcoming community and one where they could engage with the outdoors and clean, healthy air. George founded the Bournville Estate and justified it with quite the marketable blurb, The Founder is desirous of alleviating the evils which arise from the insanitary and insufficient accommodation supplied to large numbers of the working classes, and of securing to workers in factories some of the advantages of outdoor village life, with opportunities for the natural healthful occupation of cultivating the soil. The object is declared to be the amelioration of the condition of the working-class and labouring population in and around Birmingham, and elsewhere in Great Britain, by the provision of improved dwellings, with gardens and open spaces to be enjoyed therewith.9 George marketed this community as an opportunity for a better life for residents of Birmingham. His marketing connects well to the growing ideas of health and the outdoors being a space for improving it. Life would become very structured in Bournville, despite the marketing of freedom of the outdoors and open space. George did have good intentions in these regards, made evident by his actions, and time spent examining the conditions of the working-class for decades. However, this village would not cure all the ills of Victorian society, and his ideas had a great deal of religious connotations behind them. Furthermore, the Cadburys were a very devoted Quaker family. This was exemplified by John Cadbury, as he proposed his drinking chocolate would be a viable substitute to alcohol, which in early Victorian society, was linked to many of the social ills.10 George Cadbury continued these ideas when he brought them to the forefront of his model village. George also presented the idea 6 John Bradley, Cadbury’s Purple Reign: The Story behind Chocolate’s Best-Loved Brand,” Chichester, England: Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley, 2008: 8-10.

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