Distance: 5.2 miles

Difficulty of the terrain: easy

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox

Walk from central Birmingham to the historic Selly Manor and Minworth Greaves with medieval origins in Bournville, mostly along the Worcester and Birmingham Canal.

The Story

The Walk

Getting Back

Bournville’s Two Timber Framed Houses

Slightly set back from the road behind a yew hedge, amongst gardens, Selly Manor and Minworth Greaves, are situated on the northern side of Bournville Green.

Neither house, which are amongst the oldest domestic buildings, was originally built there, rather Selly Manor was moved to the site in 1916 by George Cadbury, with Minworth Greaves arriving in 1932, a gift to the village their ancestors founded from a slightly later generation of Cadbury’s.

In common with other William Morris and garden city concept inspired developments created between the 1880s and 1920s, while Bournville was new, and created due to the expansion of a new industry, the mass production of solid chocolate, its founders the Cadbury’s were keen to give it a patina of history.

The opportunity to conserve first Selly Manor and then Minworth Greaves by moving them to the estate that they were creating, due to the risk of demolition in their original locations.

Selly Manor originally stood not too far from Bournville in the Bournbrook area near where the University of Birmingham now stands. During the later part of its existence on the site from the 1850s, it was subdivided into three cottages, and poorly maintained by its landlord, leading to the rickety old structure being named “The Rookery”, giving rise to Rookery Road, which separates Bournbrook from Selly Park and is where Selly Manor used to stand.

For much of its existence, which is first attested in 1476, and likely far older, Selly Manor was a relatively grand house. One which stood in what was then a remote area, just on the Worcestershire side of the boundary where Worcestershire, Staffordshire and Warwickshire all met. It is first described as being leased to a farmer called John of the Field and later during the reign of Elizabeth I to John Setterford, a successful lawyer and local judicial official.

It was upon the death of Phylis his widowed wife in 1608 that the inventory that provides much of the evidence for the early history of the property was drawn up. This indicates that at the heart of the building there lay a medieval hall. However, this element was demolished in the mid-1660s with the brick section with glazed windows that stands today replacing it.

By 1907 Selly Manor was immensely dilapidated and was likely to be demolished when it was sold upon the death of its then owner. Instead George Cadbury bought it with plans for the building to be dismantled, its components restored, and for it to be re-erected on the site in Bournville where it now stands. This was painstaking work, but as most of the building was essentially a flackpack style kit in the form of a wooden frame, panels and fittings, not too hard to do with care.

Work on the building began in 1909 under the supervision of the architect William Alexander Harvey who designed many Bournville buildings. It was completed in 1916 with Selly Manor opening as a museum a year later.

In 1932 George Cadbury’s son Laurence Cadbury had Minworth Greaves, a far smaller, even older, property which George Cadbury had purchased to save it, re-erected behind Selly Manor.

It is thought that Minworth Greaves dates back to 1250 with the basic layout and appearance of the current house dating from the 14th Century. Which is incredibly old for a dwelling of any kind in the UK.

When the Cadbury’s took on Minworth Greaves which stood in Minworth in the north east of Birmingham not far from Sutton Coldfield, it was so dilapidated, only the wooden frame of the building remained. This meant that when the frame was dismantled and re-erected in Bournville in the 1930s substantial work had to be undertaken to recreate a version of what the house might have looked like earlier in its existence. Its wooden frame is now filled with plaster panels, and it has larger glazed windows than was the case for most of its existence.

Since 1952 the two houses have been Grade II listed buildings. Both contain 16th and 17th Century furniture from a wide array of places which was collected by Laurence Cadbury. The museum which cares for the site also has an array of artwork created between 1809 and the present day depicting the two buildings at various points in their modern existence. 

The Walk

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox

I create the Walk Midlands routes via Ordnance Survey Maps Explorer enabling me to take them on my phone. Subscribe yourself via the banner above.

This walk from central Birmingham to Selly Manor Bournville, primarily along the Worcester and Birmingham Canal, begins from New Street Station’s Stephenson Street exit opposite the West Midlands Metro stop.

Having reached New Street’s Stephenson Street exit, turn left.

Walk along Stephenson Street heading for the A38 and the Mailbox shopping centre. This is near where Cadbury’s first city centre factory was prior to their move south to Bournville in 1879.

Upon reaching a raised section of the A38 keep walking straight ahead beneath the road.

On the far side of the road turn left walking towards the entrance of the Mailbox.

Climb the steps and enter the shopping centre.

Head of the Mailbox’s escalators, walking straight through the shopping centre.

At the back of the shopping centre you come out onto a terrace.

Here head left and follow the terrace around passing a series of bars and restaurants.

On the far side of the terrace beside the Cube tower block, turn right and head across a foot bridge spanning the Worcester and Birmingham Canal.

Upon reaching the base of the ramp of the bridge turn right, and double back upon yourself walking along the towpath to opposite the basin where the Cube and the back of the Mailbox stands.

The foundations and frame of what is now the Mailbox was constructed as Birmingham’s central Royal Mail sorting office in the early 1970s. The facility was operational for less than 30 years, shutting in 1998 to be transformed into the complex of flats, shops, restaurants, bars, hotels and offices which stands to this day. Prior to the Royal Mail sorting office being constructed the site was a railway goods station on the edge of the city centre which was intermodal, long before that was a term, with the canal network. Indeed – as Worcester Wharf – the depot had originally been constructed solely to serve the canal network. Canals ran deep into the city centre during the 19th Century. Today only the basin around which the back of the Mailbox sits is the sole remnant of this era of the site’s history.

Once opposite the Cube and the basin turn right. Begin walking along the canal towpath heading south towards Bournville. You stay on the canal pretty much all the way.

The stretch of the Worcester and Birmingham Canal heading south from Gas Street Basin in the city centre where the waterway begins and intersects with the Birmingham Canal Navigation heading north, was the first bit to be constructed in the 1790s.

You follow the waterway running close to the Cross-City Line south out through Five Ways. Then out into leafy Edgbaston.

Approaching the edge of the University of Birmingham’s extensive grounds which are bounded to the west by the canal you pass through the Edgbaston Tunnel which is pretty short, just 96 metres long.

Initial work to turn the towpath into a walking and cycling route linking south Birmingham with the city centre was conducted in the early 1990s around the time of the . The route was then steadily upgraded and eventually completely hard surfaced in the 2010s. It was then that the previously narrow, uneven footway through the tunnel was extensively widened.

A little way beyond the Edgbaston Tunnel you pass a canal winding hole just after a footbridge adjacent to the Vale site, where the majority of the University of Birmingham’s own student halls are located.

Now walking adjacent to the University’s Edgbaston campus you walk through a twisting wooded section of canal.

Before passing underneath a bridge on to a long straight section very close to the Cross-City Railway Line.

Beyond a further bridge you pass the campus of the University of Birmingham approaching the recently remodelled University Station which also serves the University Hospitals Birmingham complex on top of Metchley Ridge to your right.

Passing University Station you approach the edge of the University of Birmingham’s land heading for Selly Oak.

Soon you cross the Ariel Aqueduct (named for a historic bike manufacturer based in Bournbrook) which was constructed in 2011 for the new section of the A38 (called the Aston Webb Boulevard after the architect of the University of Birmingham’s bizarre byzantine looking early 20th Century hilltop precinct) entering Selly Oak.

Historically the Bourn Brook which runs through a culvert beneath the canal embankment was the boundary between Warwickshire and Worcestershire. Putting Selly Oak and every south of it that is now Birmingham, in a different county from the city’s historic core where you began the walk.

You approach the recently built retail park with a large Sainsbury’s and a towering, rather bleak stack of student bedrooms, which was until the late 1980s the site of the notorious Birmingham Battery works. It was from the wharf, recently re-cut by the redoubtable Lapal Canal Trust, that the ill fated southern section of the Dudley No. 2 Canal headed north and west towards the Black Country. A route now long lost, and unnavigable in its entirety since 1917 when the troublesome Lapal Tunnel beneath what is now Woodgate Valley Park closed for good.

Passing the retail park, you walk underneath the road carrying the old A38 through Selly Oak. Then continue along a long straight section approaching Bournville.

Along the way you pass beneath several bridges, eventually approaching a grey brick bridge in a deep cutting with red fire doors in it. Having passed beneath this bridge you are into Bournville.

Continue along the towpath passing beneath another bridge. This bridge is the former railway bridge which used to carry the Cadbury factory’s internal railway across the Worcester and Birmingham Canal. To your left on the far side of the canal is a modern housing estate constructed on the site of the former Cadbury Wharf where goods were transhipped by water into the 20th Century.

Passing this housing estate you are near the factory and Bournville Railway Station.

Just after the railway station platform shelters on the right there is a ramp running up and around onto Mary Vale Road. Walk up this ramp onto Mary Vale Road.

Once on Mary Vale Road turn right and walk a short distance towards a 1960s office black converted to flats.

Turn right and walk down this hill until you reach Bournville Lane at the bottom.

Once on Bournville Lane turn left and walk along the road past the factory. Along the way you pass the old Bournville factory women’s swimming baths as well as the entrance to the Lady’s Park on the opposite side of the road to the factory buildings. The swimming baths have been disused for decades.

Just after the factory complex there are some steps running off to the right onto Bournville Playing Field in front of the factory buildings.

Turn right down these steps and follow the path around the edge of the field and the front of the factory. You come to a ramp on your left which you walk down.

At the bottom of the ramp turn left and walk down a fenced in walkway around the edge of the factory. It is known as birdcage walk.

Presently next to a disused security lodge the path twists sharply to the right. Walk a little further along until you reach a road.

Here either turn right to reach Cadbury World.

Or walk straight across the road and then right to keep on along the path up to Bournville Green and the heart of the village.

Here straight ahead is the village green, while to the left there are the village shops, Carillon and Rest House in the centre of the green. While to the right stands Selly Manor, a Tudor era property with Medieval antecedents moved to the site from Bournbrook in the early 20th Century, along with the even older Minworth Greaves from north Birmingham. to preserve them.

This is where the walk ends.

Getting Back

Bournville is served by the 27 bus (Northfield to Maypole via King’s Heath) and the 11 Outer Circle (at the time of writing in August 2023) and the 61 and 63 run along the nearby Bristol Road towards the southern edge of Birmingham via Northfield, and back into the city centre via Selly Oak and Edgbaston (at the time of writing in August 2023). The Cross City Line also had four trains per hour on weekdays and Saturdays and two per hour on Sundays (at the time of writing in August 2023) both north towards Sutton Coldfield and Lichfield via the city centre and south towards Redditch and Bromsgrove.