| AdminHistory | In 1831 John Cadbury (1801-1889), a tea and coffee manufacturer based in Birmingham, began manufacturing cocoa and chocolate products, leading to the establishment of the Cadbury chocolate manufacturing enterprise in Bridge Street in the city. In 1879 Cadbury's sons George and Richard Cadbury moved the family's rapidly expanding manufactory out of Birmingham's industrial city centre to suburban Bournville. A larger factory was built in Bournville along with housing and community facilities which were developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to provide improved living conditions for Birmingham workers. Richard and George Cadbury's decision to relocate the Cadbury factory was informed by contemporary debate about the unhealthy conditions of urban life in Birmingham's overcrowded slums. The move to Bournville benefitted the Cadbury business by improving the marketability of the wholesome image of their chocolate products, but was also undertaken to support the health and efficiency of their workforce who the Cadburys believed would benefit from the opportunity of working amongst the fresh air and green fields of Bournville.
Following her marriage to George Cadbury in 1888, Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury became involved in work supporting the welfare, health and education of Cadbury employees and residents in Bournville village. When George Cadbury died in 1922, Taylor Cadbury succeeded her husband as Chairman of the Bournville Village Trust, responsible for directing the development of the village. As the only surviving representative of her husband's generation, Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury played an important role at celebrations commemorating Cadbury's jubilee and centenary anniversaries in 1929 and 1931. |