A Chocolate Box Assortment

As someone who gave up chocolate for my New Year's Resolution, a trip to Cadbury World in Bournville, Birmingham, was not one of my best ideas!  However, off we went and I discovered an alternative chocolate box assortment.  So, dear Readers, grab yourself a bar of Cadbury's Dairy Milk, a cup of tea, and let me take you on a blog journey in two halves ("a glass and a half").  The first being my own version of a chocolate box full of different loves of mine, and the second being the real chocolate part!

Cadbury's was formed in 1824 by John and Benjamin Cadbury by selling tea, coffee and drinking chocolate.  With the success of the business, John's sons, Richard and George went in search of a bigger place to produce their newly found product of Cadbury's Dairy Milk.  They found a large piece of land with the river Bourn nearby and a railway.  Once bought the area was called Bournville, Bourn after the river and Ville to make it sound more French!  The sons then set about designing and constructing a model village, but I'll go into that a bit later in this post.  In the meantime, one of buildings in Bournville I was instantly drawn to is called Selly Manor.  This beautiful building built in 1327 originally occupied a space in Bournbrook in Worcestershire!  

The building was in an awful state of disrepair and was going to be destroyed until George Cadbury saved it for the new model village that he was creating in Bournville.  Each part was numbered, dismantled and then rebuilt as a centrepiece to the village in 1914.



Unfortunately, and I mean really unfortunately, the Manor wasn't open due to a book fair, so my own 'box of chocolates' was to look around the grounds.  Not disappointed though!  I have put a link here so that you can see inside.

As some Readers will know, I get very excited about old windows, doors, beams, roofs...  The Manor was everything I love to capture and my camera once again became very busy with recording the beautiful old architecture.  The hand blown glass reflecting its surroundings in fish eye form.

... door furniture, rusty, decayed, exquisite!...

... herringbone brick work against the old blackened timbers and leaded light windows...

...even seed heads looked incredible with the building as a backdrop...

With spring now well and truly singing in the fading light, the Manor provides the most exquisite backdrop.

To think that this historical building could have been raised to the ground and the beams etc used elsewhere made me very grateful to George Cadbury.



New growth surrounds each corner of the Manor, the old and new perfectly mixed, as the Manor did back in 1916 when the rebuilding was completed.



Also in the grounds is another saved building, Minworth Greaves, a medieval hall building, which was saved in 1932.  Again, painstakingly dismantled and rebuilt in the grounds of the Manor at Bournville, this time by Laurence Cadbury.



Inside the hall with it's incredible beams and vaulted ceiling ooze history.



Two incredible buildings, two pioneering members of the Cadbury family who saved these two gems of history.



One part of the garden that I felt I had to show you had to be this hedging.  Henry VIII and his six wives... seven topiary creations, two without heads!!



Bournville was full of beautiful architecture, including these mock tudor row of shops by the Village Green built at the beginning of the last century.



Of course the red telephone box has to make an appearance.



As promised at the beginning of this post, the Cadbury family decided to provide a decent environment for their workers, creating a model village with a hospital, housing, large open spaces for exercise and of course, work at the factory.  A scaled model can be found at the Bournville Experience within Cadbury World.

And so, to Cadbury World, set just next to the factory.

Luckily the smell of chocolate was virtually non existent for this abstainer!  However, freebies are given!!  Along with a little pot of melted chocolate and a choice of treats to go in with this (three teaspoons of oily melted chocolate doesn't count in my book... I didn't EAT any!).

The shop however didn't escape some purchases!!

Photography isn't allowed within this place, so I haven't much to show you but one of my pet hates is to be shut into rooms while on a tour until the next part of the tour is ready...

... I'm afraid this happened along with long queues where we didn't want to go into that part of the tour or the tour itself took you on long walks of empty corridors. 

Personally, if I came here again, I would go to the shop and then spend the rest of my time in the beautiful village along with admiring the distinctive purple lamp posts (be careful of the directional signs in the village though, they get turned by mischievous fingers!).

So I survived my demons!  Before my New Year's Resolution I would have probably bought up the shop and complained about the lack of melted chocolate in the free pot at the end.  I'm proud of myself!

I hope you enjoyed your own chocolate!!

Have a good week.

A Touch of Victorian

Sshhh, don't say it too loud, but I do believe summer has arrived in this neck of the woods.  Temperatures are soaring and the sandals are out!  I am sitting outside while I put this post together after putting all the summer garden furniture around and about.  Those who have been reading my little corner or blogland for a while will know that this is not my favourite season, but while the wasps and flies keep away, I will enjoy these warm breezes.  BUT, let's go back a bit and put you out of your misery with mine and Mumsy's trip to The Black Country Living Museum in Dudley, Birmingham.  It has been difficult to choose which images to put on my blog post to you, but I hope you'll all enjoy the look around this museum which showcases my favourite era, the Victorians.   So, in true style, grab yourself a chocolate Bourbon and a strong cup of breakfast tea and come along with me on a particularly heavy picture post of times gone by...

I think we may have come at the wrong time as the people who dress up and take us through the ages were particularly thin on the ground (and so our comparisons with the Beamish Museum began!).  Along the pathways were various bus stops that gave a very short bus ride to the next stop or up to the exit.  The buses were the bone rattling type and very solid but to see them trundling down the road was a joy to see, especially with the Victorian surroundings.

The slate in the primary school ready to be used by little hands experiencing their Great Grandparents' school days.

And the hard benches - no home comforts here!

Down one of the roads a skipping rope was tied to a lamp post with the invitation of stretching this across the road and reliving childhood memories.  Those days are long gone with the excess number of cars now, but it was surprising with the amount of different generations that were trying this, each one with huge smiles and laughter.

But let's just have a visual tour now of the Museum with less commentary...

Now let's go inside the buildings...

How about some decorating? ...

The hanging on the wall was right up my street... I do love my nuts and bolts!

Now, our other comparison with the Beamish Museum was that the houses here at the Black Country Museum seemed less inspiring.  There weren't stairs that led you up to bedrooms so that you could feel yourself going back in time however, the attention to detail as you would have seen above was very good.

Now, hungry?  We certainly were, and what could be better than fish and chips cooked in beef dripping!  Oh dear, the diet suffered here!!

Next came the canal boat ride into the cavern mines.  "It will only take five minutes" we were told before.  So, Mumsy showing her stiff upper lip, climbed onto the boat with me and on we went!  Five minutes was really 55 minutes, with deep dark caverns, spiders and a guide who took great pleasure in telling us about the amount of people who died while carving out the routes and those parts that had caved in.  Oh, not to mention the light show and loud music when you get into the depths (not one for migraine sufferers!!).  However, here are just a couple of shots for you to prove that we went in!!

Back in the day a couple of lads would walk the boat through.  Now, I was going to volunteer, really I was!  Just to see how my new feet would cope, but Mumsy by this time who has a fear of spiders, dark places, being underground and water, was just about to explode.

There was just one more thing to do... a toilet stop and then get home to calm her nerves!!

Of course, I am joking!  There are more modern and clean versions also available.

So, to sum up, I would say that if you have a day in this area it is really worth visiting.  If you have two or more days to spare, definitely the Beamish Museum (my posts are here and here).

Thanks so much for your comments again last week, I am truly sorry that I haven't got back to your blogs, I'll get back to normal soon (I hope!).

Oh, and Happy Mother's Day to all those who are celebrating today overseas.  Have a great day!!

And a special mention to my own Mumsy who has just celebrated her birthday, please wish her a good one!!