Bournville
Overview
 
Bournville is a model village
Model village
A model village is a type of mostly self-contained community, in most cases built from the late eighteenth century onwards by industrialists to house their workers...

 on the south side of Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...

, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, best known for its connections with the Cadbury family
Cadbury family
The Cadbury family is a prominent British family of industrialists descending from Richard Tapper Cadbury.* Richard Tapper Cadbury , who financed John** John Cadbury , family patriarch and founder of the chocolate company...

 and chocolate
Chocolate
Chocolate is a raw or processed food produced from the seed of the tropical Theobroma cacao tree. Cacao has been cultivated for at least three millennia in Mexico, Central and South America. Its earliest documented use is around 1100 BC...

 – including a dark chocolate bar branded "Bournville". It is also a ward within the council constituency of Selly Oak
Selly Oak
Selly Oak is a residential suburban district in south-west Birmingham, England. The suburb is bordered by Bournbrook and Selly Park to the north-east, Edgbaston and Harborne to the north, Weoley Castle and Weoley Hill to the west, and Bournville to the south...

 and home to the Bournville Centre for Visual Arts
Bournville Centre for Visual Arts
The Bournville Centre for Visual Arts is an art school in Birmingham, England. It is located at Ruskin Hall on Linden Road in the area of Bournville...

. Research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation
Joseph Rowntree Foundation
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation is a British social policy research and development charity, that funds a UK-wide research and development programme. It seeks to understand the root causes of social problems, to identify ways of overcoming them, and to show how social needs can be met in practice...

 has claimed that it is "one of the nicest places to live in Britain".
Originally the area that was to become Bournville consisted of a few scattered farmsteads and cottages, linked by winding country lanes, with the only visual highlight being the Georgian
Georgian architecture
Georgian architecture is the name given in most English-speaking countries to the set of architectural styles current between 1720 and 1840. It is eponymous for the first four British monarchs of the House of Hanover—George I of Great Britain, George II of Great Britain, George III of the United...

 built Bournbrook Hall.

The bluebell glades
Bluebell wood
A bluebell wood is a woodland that in spring-time has a carpet of bluebells underneath a newly forming leaf canopy...

 of Stocks Wood were said to be a relic of the Forest of Arden and there are Roman
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....

 remains nearby.

Having taken over their father John Cadbury
John Cadbury
John Cadbury was proprietor of a small chocolate business in Birmingham, England, that later became part of Cadbury plc, one of the world's largest chocolate producers.-Biography:...

's expanding business in 1861, the Quakers George
George Cadbury
George Cadbury was the third son of John Cadbury, a Quaker who founded Cadbury's cocoa and chocolate company.-Background:...

 and Richard Cadbury
Richard Cadbury
Richard Cadbury was the second son of the Quaker John Cadbury, founder of Cadbury's cocoa and chocolate company....

 needed to move their cocoa
Cocoa solids
Cocoa solids are the low-fat component of chocolate. When sold as an end product, it may also be called cocoa powder, cocoa, and cacao....

 and chocolate factory from Bridge Street in central Birmingham to a greenfield site to allow for expansion.

Cadbury were reliant on the canal
Canal
Canals are man-made channels for water. There are two types of canal:#Waterways: navigable transportation canals used for carrying ships and boats shipping goods and conveying people, further subdivided into two kinds:...

s for milk delivery, and on the railways for cocoa deliveries from the ports of London and Southampton.
 
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