Gaff, Sweet Gaff

The good lady and I got the keys to our new canalside residence in Bournville on the 25th January, since which time the locks have been changed, Transco have been called out on a whim, the garden has been raked to within an inch of its life, canalside wildness barely tamed, patio and driveway swept, garage "tidied", garden tools and watering equipment arranged and installed, bird tables and feeders stocked with peanuts and mixed seed (it's a clear vote for nuts), irrigation systems tested, birdbath sprayed clean, pond fountain fired up, Greco-Roman female bust placed canalside, solar garden lighting kit installed (currently out-of-service). General, all-round sprucing-up.

Inside, the whirlwind continues. The lady's handyman dad has put a door on our airing cupboard/boiler cabinet (in the bedroom - yay for toasty warm winter mornings) and he's put up an extra shelf inside and another in our alcove. All the rooms are curtained, shower poles erected (go on, ask me about drilling through marble...), bathroom completed first (typical), MFI wardrobes assembled (unfortunately, our table and its accompanying chairs would be separated by two months gap, so the table was returned alone). A remarkably cheap replacement kitchen table and chairs have since been procured (for half the cost of the MFI suite), as well as the BT line and broadband connected. The bed frame arrives on Sunday, when the mattress can be elevated to a sensible height.

As it stands right now, you could have a nice shower or a cup of tea - there is no sofa, though this looks like at least one part might be completed this Friday - that's the knock-off, dirt-cheap, blinkin-lush, battered leather sofabed that we practically stole from the shop. Really. They might have well have paid us to take it away, that's how good a deal it feels. They were the same folks that brought us the wonderful kitchen table and chairs. Anyway, we can take the sofabed now; the other half - an identical, leather, two-seater but without the sofabed facility, will be with us in up to twelve weeks. Does that sound any better than within three months?

It won't be long before it's all looking smashing. And the history of the place is fascinating: we knew it was old Cadbury land - but research has revealed all sorts of exciting things. The environmental report mentioned a few railway features on the surrounding land, but its extent would remain hidden until some digging was done. Turns out, the whole wedge-shaped slice of land, bordered by the canal to the west, Umberslade Road to the east, the Bourn Brook and Ribblesdale Road to the south and Raddlebarn Road to the north used to be the Cadbury Railway Sidings and Canal Wharf.

Cadbury and Birmingham are intertwined like ivy around a tree: the mark is everywhere. The first shop in Bull Street in the city centre wasn't terribly near the canal network, so they moved to Bridge Street, site of Birmingham's Old Wharf, a tuning-fork shaped pair of canal basins from where the engines of industry unloaded their raw materials. When Cadbury's first opened the factory in Bournville in 1879, the nearest canal dock was at Lifford Junction, where the railway network also intersected. All materials coming in or out of Cadbury's, whether via rail or canal, would have to be taken by horse and cart (and later, wagon) to Lifford Transhipment Wharf for it's onward journey.

The Cadbury clan thought how nice it would be to have their own railway and canal dock: and so that's what they did. They took a siding off the Birmingham and West (Birmingham-Bristol) railway line and - lacking the space within which to construct their vision on the factory side of the canal - built a bridge over the main line and the parallel waterway, onto the land to the east, directly across from the main site. This land became the Cadbury Railway Sidings and Waterside Wharf, and that is the land our house is built on.

Furthermore, for those of you into snails, this little snippet from the interweb: "If you walk down Sparrey Drive after about ten at night on a damp evening, you will find so many snails that it is difficult to not tread on them as you walk." Escargots, messieurs-dames?