Public art: Terpischore
Location: Near Bournville Lane, between the Bournville Cricket Ground and the Cadbury Chocolate Factory (close to the Mondelez building).
Artist:William Bloye
A bronze statue, part of a fountain, made in 1932 by William Bloye. It can be seen from the path between Bournville Lane and Cadbury World.
Terpischore at Cadbury, Bournville Cricket Ground (April 2021). Photography by Elliott Brown
It is a bronze figure of the goddess Terpsichore, the Muse of Choral Dance and Song, is represented as a young woman singing and holding a lyre and a coronal of palms. She stands in a large stone bowl decorated with gargoyle spouts, and this is placed in the centre of a ground level stone basin.
Terpischore at Cadbury, Bournville Cricket Ground (April 2009). Photography by Elliott Brown
This is the first of Bloye's fountains with female figures, begun in 1932, and is an interpretation of the Spirit of Youth, showing that, as Bloye wrote, "the loveliness of seventeen is centuries old." W.A. Cadbury, a director of the firm, considered that youth had "played a very big part in the creation and progress of this business of our".
Terpischore at Cadbury, Bournville Cricket Ground (April 2009). Photography by Elliott Brown
In 1931, Bloye, the 'well-known Birmingham sculptor' was commissioned to produce a fountain for the centenary of the Cadbury factory as a gift from the employees to the firm.
Terpischore at Cadbury, Bournville Cricket Ground (October 2011). Photography by Elliott Brown
The inscription carved around the rim of the pool includes an indirect quotation from a passage in Theodore Dreiser's novel Jennie Gerhardt (published 1911) 'From the employees to the firm of Cadbury in commemoration of their centenary 1831-1931 one hundred times the swallows to the eave'.
Terpischore at Cadbury, Bournville Cricket Ground (March 2023). Photography by Elliott Brown