FROM MODEL VILLAGES TO MODEL FARMS
April 11 2006
The great grandson of one of Birmingham's famous founding fathers, who was responsible for overseeing the multi million pound modernisation of a South Birmingham agricultural estate, has recently retired, after a charitable service lasting for over twenty five years.
James Taylor, great grandson of chocolate maker and philanthropist, Richard Cadbury, stood down as a Trustee of the Bournville Village Trust Agricultural Estates Committee, at the end of 2005.
The housing association owns five farms within 3000 acres of land in Worcestershire. The history of the original acquisition of the agricultural land was a pioneering step taken by the Cadbury brothers, to preserve the rural nature of the land. And so began the first Green Belt measure, in the early 1920s, some 25 years before there was any such National policy.
In 1981 James Taylor was appointed as Chairman of a new Trustees Agricultural Estates Committee. He has overseen the heavy financial demands of the organisation's agricultural estates. Five main tenanted farms, mostly dairy, have been fully modernised in a multi million pound capital investment programme which began its final phase earlier this year.
Bournville Village Trust also owns several woods, one site of special scientific interest and some large houses, which are used by charitable groups.
There is also a 120 acre working farm which hosts 150 school visits per year and comes complete with its own schoolhouse and teacher. Chapmans Hill Farm is managed by the Worgan Trust and was established thirty years ago by Paul Cadbury as a demonstration farm, for Birmingham schoolchildren to learn more about the origins of food and farming.
James Taylor said: "Bournville Village Trust has invested a lot of time and money to bring the farms up to modern farming standards and I am happy to have played a role in that. There is a very powerful Quaker ethos working through the organisation with dedicated staff committed to run the estate as best as possible to the standards that George Cadbury set out from the beginning."
