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Bournville
An essential visit for chocoholics, Bournville has been the home of Cadbury chocolate since Victorian times - and now houses the lively Cadbury World visitor experience.
Situated on the banks of the Worcester & Birmingham Canal, the site has a long and happy association with the Midlands canals. Chocolate cargoes were once carried between Staffordshire, Birmingham and the Severn estuary by narrowboat, a distinctive sight with their Cadbury livery.
About Bournville and Cadbury World
Bournville is a classic example of a so-called Victorian 'model village'. These pre-planned miniature towns were built by the great Quaker industrialists to house their workers, providing shops, churches, schools, reading rooms and hospitals - though usually not pubs.
Bournville, built to the west of Birmingham city centre, was constructed by the Cadbury family to house workers at its new confectionery factory. The Cadbury plant is still located in Bournville today, and it is now also home to Cadbury World.
Cadbury's has a strong connection with the canals, once operating its own fleet of boats to transport chocolate crumb between Bournville, another factory on the Shropshire Union Canal, and one on the Gloucester & Sharpness Canal.
A classic workers' community
Bournville is one of three classic workers' communities in England. The others are Sir Titus Salt's canalside mill town at Saltaire, and the Lever Brothers' community at Port Sunlight. All three were built as attempts at social reform to improve the lot of their workers who often subsisted in the appalling slum conditions of the inner cities of the times.
The motives for their building were not entirely altruistic: a happy worker works harder, and these communities were usually built in close proximity to the factories they served. However, even by today's standards they look pretty enlightened and Bournville is now a desirable residential district.
Getting to Cadbury World
Dedicated visitor moorings make it easy for boating holidaymakers to get to Cadbury World.
But if you're just visiting Birmingham for the day or the weekend, why not take a walk down the Worcester & Birmingham Canal? Bournville is four miles south of Gas Street Basin and Brindleyplace, the hub of Birmingham's canals.
Simply find your way from central Birmingham to the canal, using the fingerpost signs dotted around the city centre. Then walk past Gas Street Basin, past the sharp canal turn at the Mailbox, and continue south down the canal. This greatly enjoyable and surprisingly leafy walk, with only the rush of trains on the parallel railway line to disturb your peace, will take you to Cadbury World - where you can re-energise yourself with chocolate from the gift shop.
