“Top Brummie” honoured in flower display

George Cadbury

Birmingham has voted chocolate-maker George Cadbury as its top Brummie in an online poll.

Cadbury will be honoured in an art installation created by local hospice Birmingham St Mary’s, after they asked Twitter users throughout March to vote for their ‘greatest Brummie’.

Also in the poll were Joseph Chamberlain, Matthew Boulton, JRR Tolkien and Julia Varley.

Cadbury, who won 61% of the vote, was born and lived in Edgbaston, and took the helm of the Cadbury company aged 22 – five years before the company became the first in the UK to sell cocoa. He also designed Bournville Village Trust to improve the overcrowding and squalid living conditions in the city at the time, and supported children from deprived areas, and donated the Lickey Hills Country Park to Birmingham.

Birmingham St Mary’s has dedicated a wrought iron flower to him at its ‘Forget Me Not’ art display in Brindleyplace, which will be installed until 8 April.

Locals can also dedicate a flower to loved ones, and the donations will go towards the hospice, which costs £8m a year to run.

Hamish Shilliday, head of fundraising at Birmingham St Mary’s, said: “George Cadbury was an exceptional man who did great things for our city, so it’s no surprise that the people of Birmingham voted him their greatest Brummie.”

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