‘It’s basically a Ladybird book’: Inside Bournville, Cadbury’s peculiar tee-total Victorian village

I don’t know whether it’s the sellotaped A4 advert for a Morris dancing course in the butcher’s shop window, or the gaggle of grey squirrels chasing each other’s bushy tails around the Village Green, but the effects of Bournville’s charm are always instantaneous.

As a child, I’d occasionally be driven past this whimsical slice of Blighty by my parents and, for a fleeting minute or two, feel like I’d been transported into an Enid Blyton story. My face suddenly pressed against the window, as the lugubrious grey suburbia of 1990s Birmingham briefly morphed into a bucolic world of bowler hats, red telephone boxes and jolly afternoon capers.

“It’s basically a Ladybird book,” said local tour guide Ian Jelf, during our lunchtime ramble around what is, by some considerable distance, Birmingham’s most curious neighbourhood.

Even if you’re unfamiliar with the Second City, the name Bournville probably rings a bell. The shiny red bars of dark chocolate found on newsagent confectionery shelves across the country are just one of many seductive products made by Cadbury, the local institution to whom the neighbourhood owes its unique appearance and which celebrates its 200th anniversary this year.

Established in 1824, when Quaker John Cadbury opened a shop on Birmingham’s Bull Street selling tea, coffee and drinking chocolate, it was the hot cocoa that proved particularly popular in Victorian Britain. With production ramping up, Cadbury moved to larger sites in the city centre, before sons George and Richard, in 1879, took the unprecedented step of moving the business out into what was then rural Worcestershire, some four miles away from the city’s smoky industrial heart.

With proximity to a burgeoning railway running alongside the Worcester and Birmingham Canal, the company found itself in an idyllic pastoral hinterland with superb transport links. And 145 years later, the factory is still in the same spot.

These days, Bournville is sandwiched between Selly Oak’s student-heavy terraces and King’s Norton’s more conventional suburbia, yet appears to have barely changed, with its quaint chocolate-box streets spidering out in all directions from the Village Green, laced by houses in quirky architectural styles.

The factory’s huge purple CADBURY lettering was impossible to miss as my train wheezed into Bournville Station on a chilly January afternoon, after which I followed purple signs and brushed my hand against purple handrails while cutting a zig-zagging path to the Green, passing along the way the rectangular Cadbury World – a rather incongruous children’s attraction opened in 1990.

Soundtracked by mellifluous birdsong and the crunch of leaves underfoot, I met Jelf at the Rest House, a strange multi-sided hillside building resembling a wooden wizard’s hat. It was built to celebrate George Cadbury’s wedding anniversary in 1914, and was also a gift honouring his philanthropic interest in his worker’s welfare. The Cadbury brothers bought 120 acres of land around the factory in 1893, and planned Bournville as a model village to provide safe and affordable housing away from the torrid city slums, but also to encourage growing fruit and veg, and taking regular exercise.

But they didn’t just want fine housing for their own workers.

“They were very paternalistic,” said Jelf. “But George set it up as a separate trust [the Bournville Village Trust, or BVT] and, very importantly, he didn’t want it to just be for his workers. It’s a way for ordinary people getting better accommodation than they could ever dream of. It’s for everyone.”

We took a languid stroll down the arcing Sycamore Road, where Jelf pointed out the hodge-podge of houses, covering everything from angular Dutch gables to the 500-year-old timber-framed Selly Manor, transported piece by piece from Sutton Coldfield in 1932. Indeed, one of the reasons Bournville looks the way it does, is that the BVT has a very particular – and pleasant – aesthetic to uphold. So no large fences. No walls. And until fairly recently, no satellite dishes.

“For years and years, the village trust wouldn’t allow external TV aerials, so it’s no coincidence that in the 1980s this was the first area in Birmingham to get cable TV,” said Jelf on spotting a parked Sky TV van.

An overflowing fountain of knowledge with a lilting radio presenter’s voice, Jelf sometimes embellishes his sentences with quickfire staccato dates and facts, so much is the information he needs to impart. And he became swept up in nostalgia as we ambled back to the Green where its elegant parade of shops includes a butcher, a baker and a florist, all with proud independent names above the windows (Christine’s, Russell’s, Evans’s).

“You just don’t get this in Britain anymore,” he explained, becoming animated. “This reminds me of the 1960s and my mum going out with a basket. Butcher’s shop, baker’s shop. And the reason they survived is because the people in Bournville behave in a particular way. It’s got a genuine sense of community.”

Speaking of community, there are a few things that any Brummie worth his or her salt will tell newcomers to the city. One is the well-trodden “More Canals than Venice” line. Another could be that there are no pubs in Bournville, thanks to Cadbury’s teetotal Quaker heritage.

Which is true. Bournville has always been a dry neighbourhood, though the lettering reading “Licensed” beneath the white swinging sign at the low-rise Old Farm Hotel reveals one small loophole. There’s a licensed bar inside, with the caveat being you need to be a guest to sip on a pint there.

But this area is no alcohol desert. It should be pointed out that Bournville is next door to Birmingham’s beer neighbourhood du jour, Stirchley, where its cavalcade of sleek pubs and taprooms begins at Attic Brew Co, almost within ordering distance of the train station exit.

Our tour continued past the oddly byzantine shape of Bournville Parish Church, the bittersweet sight of Cadbury’s handsome disused Edwardian swimming baths and the 48 bells sheltered high in the bronze Bournville Carillon, which truly comes into its own on Christmas Eve’s glimmering lantern-led carol services.

Long shadows fell over Bournville Lane under a milky afternoon sun as knifing winds rolled in across Rowheath Playing Fields, and we finally meandered down the hill back toward the Village Green. If Hovis ever wanted to recreate their famous boy-on-the-bike advert in a more urban setting, then Bournville wouldn’t be a bad choice.

But they don’t need the added attention here. They like it just the way it is.

Essentials

The Grand Hotel Birmingham (0121 827 9600; thegrandhotelbirmingham.co.uk) is a ten-minute stroll from New Street Station (from which trains to Bournville depart every 20 minutes) and has doubles from £165, including breakfast.

For more information, see visitbirmingham.com.