Anyone who is a fan of dark chocolate will know the name Bournville all too well.
Yet for those of us from Birmingham the name of Bournville has two meanings because it’s also the name of the village created for workers in the vicinity of the Cadbury’s factory.
But which came first – the village or the chocolate bar?
Apart from the Georgian-built Bournbrook Hall, the land on which the “model village” of Bournville now stands was once home to a handful of farmsteads and cottages.
In 1861 when young Quakers George and Richard Cadbury took over the family business from their father John, the pair decided it needed to move out of its city centre Bridge Street factory if it was to expand.
The brothers wanted a greenfield site which they could develop that would have easy access to canal and rail networks and opted to move to Bournbrook Hall, four miles south of the city, in 1879.
It’s said the rural location, already serviced by the new Stirchley Street Railway Station, was chosen as it was cleaner, healthier and more amenable to a long-term expansion plan.
Just four years later, in 1893, George bought a 120-acre swathe of land close to the works and planned, from out of his own pocket, a model village which would “alleviate the evils of modern more cramped living conditions”.
George and Richard named the area Bournville after the Bourn Brook with ville, the French for town, to distinguish it from the rest of the local area and then set about developing their factory in their new suburb.
By 1900, the estate included 313 cottages and houses set in over 330 acres, with more built in the years running up to World War One.
Bournville, which is now in a Conservation Area, went on to become a blueprint for other model village estates across the country.
But it wouldn’t be until 1908 that the first Bournville plain chocolate bar was sold.
So it was leafy Bournville, which is still a popular village today, that came first.
Although still sold in the UK, Bournville Plain is now manufactured in France.
Cadbury’s, which started life in Bull Street, Birmingham, in 1824 and opened its first factory in Crooked Lane in 1831 , launched its Bournville cocoa in 1905 in the village’s name.
