Bournville Village Research Articles

Chocolate and Paradise

The Cadbury family had quite the legacy on British culture and society through their successful chocolate company and model Victorian Bournville village. This village was adopted by the Cadbury family after the growth of their chocolate company and sought to provide working-class employees with a better life in the countryside than the increasingly "overcrowded and dirty" Victorian cities. This paper aimed to challenge the largely accepted notion that the model town of Bournville was a shining example of Victorian excellence equipped with adequate housing, outdoor spaces, and progressive living and working conditions. Bournville, England certainly contained many great opportunities for working-class Englishmen and George Cadbury had largely good intentions. However, upon further critical analysis, the accepted history of the site needs to be reconsidered and the village may not be as great as it seems on the surface.

Story-telling and history construction: rereading George Cadbury's Bournville Model Village

In 1895, an innovation in the provision of model housing by manufacturers occurred with the development by George Cadbury of Bournville Model Village. This was the first model settlement to provide low-density housing not restricted to factory employees. This paper uses the Bournville archives to explore the accepted history of this settlement. It is argued that the accepted history is a particular reading of this planning experiment. The paper explores the construction of the «accepted history», identifies some of the authors behind the history and uses the minute books and secretary reports of Bournville Village Trust to construct an alternative historical narrative. The alternative history is one in which Bournville begins as a building estate rather than as a model village. The building estate was provided with no community facilities, and the houses were targeted at the lower- and upper- middle classes. Cadbury repackaged the building estate by appropriating the garden city movement, in return the garden city movement also appropriated Bournville by using it as a working example of a model garden village. The paper makes a contribution to theoretical debate by linking a literature from organizational studies concerned with story-telling and construction to historical geography.

George Cadbury's Contribution to Sport

George Cadbury lived from 1839-1922. With his brother Richard he is best known for the development of his family business which moved under the brothers’ leadership from Bull St. to Bournville. He was also a teacher, a politician, a newspaper proprietor and the founder of the Bournville Village Trust. In fact he was “a national figure” 1 I shall show that throughout his life he was a very keen sportsman and that he had a lot of influence both in the sporting ethos of the Cadbury Firm and in the flowering of sport at Bournville, Rowheath and the Lickeys. His love of sport was within the context of his Christian discipleship and Quaker beliefs. He was once asked by a journalist “What are the two most influential books in your life”? and George replied Thomas a Kempis “The Imitation of Christ” and William Law “A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life”. “He loved games for themselves, but he loved them still more as a physical training necessary to keep one fit for the real business of life” 2 . In addition to his participation in cricket, golf, football and swimming “he remained a lifelong devotee of outdoor pursuits like walking, cycling and riding” 3 . There are three parts to George Cadbury’s contribution to sport. Firstly there is his own play. Secondly there is what he did for sport in providing sports facilities for the Cadbury company’s employees and his own participation in this. Thirdly there is what may loosely be described as the sporting legacy left by him and his brother Richard. Firstly let’s consider his own play. George’s enthusiasm for sport and games came from his home. “His childhood was spent in a loving and deeply religious, but somewhat Spartan atmosphere...A carriage was considered too luxurious, however two ponies were kept for the boys to ride, but they had to look after them entirely themselves” 4 .

Joseph Wharton: Quaker Industrial Pioneer (review)

44Quaker History thropic activities of the Cadburys and Rowntrees. The Frys never succeeded on quite the same scale and tend to get submerged in her account. She argues it was genuine concern for workers and not just economic self-interest that led both the Cadburys and the Rowntrees to establish model communities at Bournville Village and at New Earswick. And, it was more conscience than capital gain that led them both into newspaper ownership, and thus into Liberal politics in the 20th century. The tensions between Quakerism and industrial capitalism molded the chocolate conscience. Should Joseph Rowntree advertise even though he regarded it as an unjustified business expense? Should the Cadburys print racing forecasts in their popular newspaper even though they disapproved of betting? Should Quaker firms use cocoa produced under conditions of virtual slavery? Should Laurence Cadbury sell the News Chronicle! The chocolate conscience was more often bitter than sweet. Although not unerring, the chocolate conscience was enduring, as Gillian Wagner shows in her final chapters on the trust makers and their legacies. The Bournville Village Trust lives on, and the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and Social Services Trust continue to play important roles in British philanthropy today. Gillian Wagner's book is a readable introduction to a complex question rather than a systematic analysis of it. It is lightly documented and leaves many issues to be explored—the relationship between Liberalism and Quakerism, for example . Her topical approach by family and subject creates some chronological confusions. Yet, Gillian Wagner has posed an interesting question and suggested some enlightening answers. Historians of Quakerism and of industrialism would do well to follow her example of exploring the Quaker conscience at work in the modern economy. Whitesburg, KentuckyJudi Jennings Joseph Wharton: Quaker Industrial Pioneer. By W. Ross Yates. Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1987. 413 pp. $49.50. Yates's interest in Joseph Wharton lies in this nineteenth-century Quaker's contribution to the industrialization of America, and he considers Wharton's Quaker ties important enough to figure in his subtitle. Wharton was a birthright Quaker who remained a member of meeting all of his life. He married a Quaker and raised his family within the tradition. A home-loving individual, Wharton seldom moved beyond his nurturing circle of Friends, although he played an important role in politics, traveled, and became the friend of men like Andrew Carnegie. Yates believes Wharton's ethical behavior—in an age when industrialists often pursued profit without regard to moral values—stemmed from Quaker beliefs. In his early years Wharton wrote poetry in which spiritual themes played some role and in his later years he composed one theological pamphlet, The Creed in the Discipline (1892). He sought to prove that a tenet concerning the Trinity was for Friends a relatively recent introduction into the discipline, therefore spurious (p. 347). The larger question remains whether Wharton was a successful industrialist because of his Quaker background, which Yates deems important, or whether he placed his Quaker values above the concern of acquiring substantial personal wealth through the creative and energetic pursuit of business. First of Book Reviews45 all, it is important to note that Wharton came from a well-to-do Hicksite family in which both parents followed the vocation of the ministry. He was raised by parents generous in both their wealth and their time, and he admired those parents, particularly his mother, Deborah. Still, Wharton's own positions on issues often appear to be expedient. His family were strong abolitionists; Joseph deplored slavery but the position he adopted as a youth, of allowing southerners to make up their own minds about the morality of their slave system, allowed him to continue to sell his nickel and zinc in southern states. He appears to have had few pacifist leanings, so nothing deterred him from major expansion in his zinc works in order to feed the military expansion of the north. "He would make zinc for shells; use the profits to buy bonds; and contribute money to the support of soldiers and their families" (p. 110) even when this distressed his mother, who was a pacifist. Yates makes the valuable point...

The Chocolate Conscience (review)

Book Reviews43 numerous atrocities of the war. Jennings, nevertheless, makes it clear that the Indians served as convenient excuses by both British and French to cover up the Europeans' own barbaric actions since terrorism "by authority was the order of the day" (p. 205). At Quebec, Wolfe ordered his artillery to fire on residential areas and threatened to kill French POWs, while Montcalm handled his own city's residents who wanted to surrender by threatening them with Indian reprisals. The true heroes of Jennings's magnificent book are the Society of Friends and, more specifically, Israel Pemberton and the Friendly Association. The Society of Friends, who dominated the Pennsylvania Assembly at the outbreak of war, were vilified by the greedy proprietor Thomas Penn and his major propagandist William Smith. The war became intertwined with the political battles between the proprietor and the Quaker-dominated assembly. The Friends accused Penn of mismanaging Indian affairs, which brought on the war. Accused of disloyalty and threatened with disenfranchisement, the Friends, nevertheless, played a major role in the British victory. The Friendly Association made independent inquiries and encouraged negotiations in July 1757 that pacified the eastern Delawares. A year later, prompted by Quakers, New Jersey held a treaty at Burlington to assuage the complaints of the Indians of that area. Working with the able but sickly General John Forbes, the Friendly Association contributed to the making of the great Treaty of Easton in October, 1758. Because many of the Indians now joined the peace ranks and shifted away from the French alliance, the British were later able to achieve success at Fort Duquesne and at Quebec. Jennings suggests that the Friends should be lauded, not maligned as Daniel Boorstin and other historians have done, since Pemberton and his associates "spent more on the cause of peace with the Indians than the combined payments from the proprietor (zero), the governor, the assembly, and the superintendent of Indian affairs" (p. 383). British attempts to centralize control and expand empire eventually helped create American revolutionaries against the King and Parliament. Coming full circle, it was these same revolutionaries who sought their own "empire of fortune " in the Ohio Valley after the Revolution, and control over Indian territories and peoples in the name of liberty. Thus Jennings's work has farreaching implications and should be of paramount interest to any student of American history, since the "war's myth blends with the general myth of the Frontier and thus serves to ennoble and democratize the heroic colonials who became Americans" (p. 171). SUNY - New PaltzLaurence M. Hauptman The Chocolate Conscience. By Gillian Wagner. London: Chatto & Windus, 1987. i, 178 pp. £18.95. What was the chocolate conscience? To find out, Gillian Wagner looks at the history of the cocoa bean and of the three Quaker families—the Frys, the Cadburys, and the Rowntrees—who helped make this "the age of chocolate." She summarizes the chocolate business beginning in the late eighteenth century and the state of the Society of Friends in the nineteenth. Each of the three Quaker families faced very real moral dilemmas when the bitter cocoa bean brought them sweet success and they had to reconcile their religious beliefs and their business practices. A chapter on "Industrial Paternalism" provides the context for the philan- 44Quaker History thropic activities of the Cadburys and Rowntrees. The Frys never succeeded on quite the same scale and tend to get submerged in her account. She argues it was genuine concern for workers and not just economic self-interest that led both the Cadburys and the Rowntrees to establish model communities at Bournville Village and at New Earswick. And, it was more conscience than capital gain that led them both into newspaper ownership, and thus into Liberal politics in the 20th century. The tensions between Quakerism and industrial capitalism molded the chocolate conscience. Should Joseph Rowntree advertise even though he regarded it as an unjustified business expense? Should the Cadburys print racing forecasts in their popular newspaper even though they disapproved of betting? Should Quaker firms use cocoa produced under conditions of virtual slavery? Should Laurence Cadbury sell the News Chronicle! The chocolate conscience was more often bitter than sweet. Although...

When We Build Again. ["Bournville Village Trust"] (Book Review)

When We Build Again. ["Bournville Village Trust"] (Book Review)

Bournville Village Trust

UNDER the title “Sixty Years of Planning: the Bournville Experiment”, the trustees of the Bournville Village Trust have issued an admirable illustrated account of the development of Bournville from the building of the factory there by Richard and George Cadbury in 1879, when the first houses were also built to provide accommodation for those of the workmen who had to live near the factory (Bournville Village Trust, Birmingham 30). Bournville Village as we know it to-day dates from 1895, and the land and houses were transferred to an independent body, the Bournville Village Trust, when the success of the Bournville Estate seemed assured in 1900. The trust deed laid down the broad lines of future development, and this pamphlet shows the many sides of the work at Bournville in their true perspective. Housing schemes, the reconditioning of slum property and the planning of both municipal and private developments, as well as research into building and planning properties all find some mention in a book which is of real topical value apart from its historical aspect as a popular account of a great pioneer development. The illustrations of amenities, community activities, the planning of and provision for recreation, as well as for cultural needs, the treatment of transport and road problems and the preservation of the countryside show what is possible with vision and forethought, and should give a further stimulus to that growing movement to use to the full the opportunities which the tragedies of war itself now afford us of rectifying the mistakes and failures of the past and our failure to plan harmoniously either the industrial towns or the countryside of Great Britain.

Bournville Housing-A description of the Housing Schemes of Cadbury Bros., Ltd., and the Bournville Village Trust (Book Review)

Bournville Housing-A description of the Housing Schemes of Cadbury Bros., Ltd., and the Bournville Village Trust (Book Review)