LETTER OF THE MONTH
Brilliant Brummies
I must add a name to Richard Vinen’s piece (April) on the first families of Birmingham: Nettlefold. John Sutton Nettlefold was married to Margaret Chamberlain and became chairman of the Housing Committee for the City of Birmingham. Like Cadbury, he created a village - not for his workers, but instead for people being moved out of central Birmingham’s slums. Motivated by strong Christian principles, he also created a ‘garden suburb’ estate, Moor Pool, with affordable rents for those who had been living in the intensely overcrowded ‘back-to-backs”.
As he said in a 1906 speech: “We can,
