The factory in a garden

Many people came to the new cities for work. They needed houses near the factories. But these houses were often very small and too near to other houses. And they had no bathrooms ...

In 1879, two brothers, makers of cocoa and chocolate, left Birmingham and built a factory in the country near the city. They called the place Bournville.

The brothers saw how workers in the city lived and worked. They wanted to make things better for them, so there were parks and gardens near the factory. (Some parks were only for men, other parks only for women!)

And the brothers wanted to give people - and not only their workers - better houses, too. They built houses, each with a bathroom and a garden. Later the brothers built shops, schools and churches.

Bournville Garden Village is still there today, next to the brothers´ “factory in a garden“.

The name of the brothers and their firm is Cadbury.

Highlight 3, Cornelsen Verlag, Berlin, 1996/2001, page 20