A vision for the future

Cadbury may no longer be a British-owned company, but I am fairly certain that its products will still be among the most popular gifts around the country this Christmas. And if you do happen to open a Cadbury’s selection box this Yule, perhaps contemplate, however briefly, the contribution the Cadbury family made to the housing world - one that is perhaps underplayed these days.

George Cadbury was born in Birmingham in 1839, the third son of John Cadbury, the company’s founder. The city had a much flatter social structure than the cities of the north - instead of vast factories, there were small workshops and skilled artisans working across the proverbial ‘thousand trades’. Social mobility was high, and workers and owners were much closer, both economically and physically, than elsewhere.

Shocked by the slums
As a Quaker, George Cadbury had taught voluntarily at adult schools, institutions which had a strong religious element but also, in true Brummie tradition, had established savings funds and mutual aid societies. While housing was supposedly better than in other industrial cities, he was stunned by the horrors that he saw in the slums. He later wrote: ‘If I had not been brought into contact with the people… and found… how difficult it was to lead a good life in a back street, I should probably never have built Bournville Village.’

By the time Mr Cadbury inherited the business, Birmingham was in the grip of the ‘municipal gospel’; the belief, propagated by nonconformist preachers, that the citizenry, rich and poor, should devote themselves to the collective well-being of the city. Present at these chapel sermons was the tight knot of Quaker and Unitarian families - including the Chamberlains - who ran the city and many of its businesses. Importantly, they almost all lived in the Regency surrounds of Edgbaston, an estate owned by the Calthorpe family, just a mile to the west of Birmingham city centre.

Mr Cadbury supported radical land reform policies, started to promote industrial democracy within his factory, and spent a large proportion of his life engaged in philanthropic works. He was particularly enervated by the desire to bring people back to the land. His own passion for gardening and the great outdoors had been inspired by the semi-rural surroundings of Edgbaston; he clearly believed that the lot of the workers could be improved if they were brought into contact with greenery.

It is within this context that he decided to move his factory to the edge of the city, and build with it a model village, not just for his workers, but for the wider population. This is apparent in the Deed of Foundation of the Bournville Village Trust, which states: ‘The object is declared to be the amelioration of the condition of the working classes 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.’

Open to everyone
Contrary to received wisdom, Bournville was never a ‘factory town’ like Saltaire or Port Sunlight. It was open to all, not just workers, and from the beginning it was to be a co-operative exercise. Mr Cadbury was determined not to be too paternalistic. There were opportunities to buy as well as rent, and later, co-operative building schemes became popular. It was a signpost towards the garden cities and new towns.

Indeed, the Town and Country Planning Association - then the Garden Cities Association - held its first ever conference in Bournville. At that event, garden city founder Ebenezer Howard noted: ‘A garden village has been built… a garden city is but a step beyond.’ Even John Harvey’s design, reflecting the arts and crafts tradition of William Morris, the first president of the Birmingham municipal school of art, seems to auger what would arrive in Hertfordshire.

Trend-setter
Bournville would have other resonances. When John Sutton Nettlefold, Joseph Chamberlain’s cousin, became head of Birmingham’s housing department in 1901, he was determined to extend the city into the surrounding countryside with the addition of tens of new Bournvilles. Tram lines were opening up new areas for development, and Mr Nettlefold’s vision was that, with the right planning frameworks and regulations, they could be attractive and affordable. The council, rather than subsidising building, could take the role of the Calthorpes and create, in the then mayor’s words, Edgbastons for the workers.

If land values and development were regulated and controlled, the market would do the rest; there would be no need for council housing, which was being pursued enthusiastically in cities such as Liverpool, but was anathema to Birmingham’s liberal elite. Mr Nettlefold’s vision was to mix the garden city model with the municipal gospel that had given his home city water, gas, libraries and schools. He may have invented the term ‘town planning’ and probably wrote the 1909 act. His own exemplar garden suburb, the Moor Pool estate, still stands in Harborne, albeit now managed by Grainger.

The expansion of the city in the 1930s (when it became, later, a leader in council housing under Neville Chamberlain) would follow similar lines, with large gardens and leafy roads even in modest areas. Even its creation of ‘overflow estates’ in the 1960s may come from the same root. Birmingham became the most suburban and dispersed of all our large cities. This gave it, contrary to stereotype, a remarkable leafiness - but it also created problems in terms of transport and access to services.

Bournville is testament to a lost spirit of philanthropy in housing. But it is also surprising that, at a time when garden cities and suburbs are seen as the solution to the nation’s housing woes, it is not mentioned more often. Perhaps it is good, old-fashioned metropolitan bias.

Jon Neale is head of UK research at Jones Lang Lasalle