The Dartington Hall Trust, near
TotnesTotnes is a market town at the head of the estuary of the River Dart in Devon, England within the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty...
,
DevonDevon is a large county in England. The county is also referred to as Devonshire, although that is an unofficial name, rarely used inside of the county itself and often indicating a traditional or historical context. The county shares borders with Cornwall to the west and Dorset and Somerset to...
,
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
is a charity working for the advancement of the arts, sustainability and social justice.
The Trust currently runs 16 charitable programmes, including The Dartington International Summer School and Schumacher Environmental College. In addition to developing and promoting educational programmes, the Trust hosts other groups and acts as a venue for retreats.
The Dartington Hall Trust is based on a 1,200 acre estate in South Devon.
The Dartington Hall Trust, near
TotnesTotnes is a market town at the head of the estuary of the River Dart in Devon, England within the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty...
,
DevonDevon is a large county in England. The county is also referred to as Devonshire, although that is an unofficial name, rarely used inside of the county itself and often indicating a traditional or historical context. The county shares borders with Cornwall to the west and Dorset and Somerset to...
,
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
is a charity working for the advancement of the arts, sustainability and social justice.
The Trust currently runs 16 charitable programmes, including The Dartington International Summer School and Schumacher Environmental College. In addition to developing and promoting educational programmes, the Trust hosts other groups and acts as a venue for retreats.
The Dartington Hall Trust is based on a 1,200 acre estate in South Devon. The medieval
hallIn architecture, several things are commonly known as Halls or halls. A hall is fundamentally a relatively large space enclosed by a roof and walls. In the Iron Age, a mead hall was such a simple building and was the residence of a lord and his retainers...
was built between 1388 and 1400 for John Holand, Earl of Huntingdon, half-brother to
Richard IIRichard II was the eighth King of England of the House of Plantagenet. He ruled from 1377 until he was deposed in 1399. Richard was a son of Edward, the Black Prince and was born during the reign of his grandfather, Edward III...
. After John was beheaded, the Crown owned the estate until it was acquired in 1559 by Sir
Arthur ChampernowneSir Arthur Champernowne was a Vice-Admiral of the West who lived at Dartington Hall in Devon, England.Champernowne was the second son of Sir Philip Champernowne of Modbury, Devon, whose family had lived in Devon since arriving from Cambernon in Normandy in the eleventh century as part of the...
,
Vice-Admiral of the WestThe historical title Vice-Admiral of the West is sometimes applied to holders of the crown appointment Vice-Admiral of the Coast of counties in the South West of England....
under
Elizabeth IElizabeth I was Queen of England and Queen of Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called the Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty...
. The Champernowne family lived in the Hall for 366 years.
The hall was mostly derelict by the time it was bought by
LeonardLeonard Knight Elmhirst 6 June, 1893 – 16 April, 1974, a Yorkshire clergyman's son was an agronomist working in India, and was co-founder with his wife Dorothy Straight of the Dartington Hall project in progressive education and rural reconstruction....
and Dorothy Elmhirst in 1925. They renovated the buildings, replacing the magnificent
hammerbeam roofHammerbeam roof, in architecture, the name given to a Gothic open timber roof, of which the finest example is that over Westminster Hall . The span of Westminster Hall is 68 ft. 4 in., and the opening between the ends of the hammer-beams 25 ft. 6 in. The height from the paving of the hall to the...
on the
Great HallGreat Hall may refer to* Great hall, the main room of a royal palace, nobleman's castle or large manor house* Great Hall of the People, Tiananmen Square, Beijing* Great Hall of the University of Sydney, Australia...
, and set about their goal of introducing progressive education and rural reconstruction into what was then a depressed agricultural economy. In 1935 the Dartington Hall
TrustA charitable trust is a trust established for charitable purposes, and is a more specific term than "charitable organisation".-United States:...
, a registered
charityA charitable organization is a type of non-profit organization . The term is relatively general and can technically refer to a public charity or a private foundation. It differs from other types of NPOs in that its focus is centered around goals of a general philanthropic nature A charitable...
, was set up, and it has run the estate since that time.
Dartington Hall School
Dartington Hall School, founded in 1926, offered a progressive coeducational boarding life. When it started there was a minimum of formal classroom activity and the children learned by involvement in estate activities. With time more academic rigour was imposed, but it remained progressive and had good success educating the children, sometimes the more wayward ones, of the fee-paying intelligentsia. A noted alumnus was
Lord YoungMichael Young, Baron Young of Dartington was a British sociologist, social activist and politician. During an active life he was instrumental in shaping Labour Party thinking, was a leading protagonist on social reform, and founded or helped found a number of socially-useful organizations...
, a founder of
Which? and the Open University.
Lucian FreudLucian Michael Freud, OM, CH is a British painter of German origin.- Early life and family :He is the son of Jewish parents Ernst Ludwig Freud, an architect, and Lucie née Brasch...
also attended the school for two years, but mostly played truant.
Martin BernalMartin Gardiner Bernal is a Professor Emeritus of Government and Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University. He is a scholar of modern Chinese political history...
is also a noted alumnus. At its peak the school had some 300 pupils. However, with the advent of state-based progressive education, the death of its founders, and the appointment of a new headmaster who was at odds with the school's philosophies and subsequently generated a significant amount of negative publicity, the school suffered a dramatic drop in recruitment. Despite the efforts of those who cared about the school, it finally shut its doors in 1987. Its alumni website indicates a vibrant society, with some 4000 former pupils listed.
Dartington International Summer School
Dartington International Summer School is a department of The Dartington Hall Trust. The Summer School is both a festival and a music school, with teaching and performing happening on site all day, every day. Participants spend the daytime studying a variety of different musical courses, and the evenings attending, or performing in, concerts.
The Dartington Gardens
The gardens were created by Dorothy Elmhirst with the involvement of major
landscape designLandscape design is similar to landscape architecture. Landscape Design focuses more on the artistic merits of design, while Landscape Architecture encompasses the artistic design as well as structural engineering. Landscape design and Landscape Architecture, both take into account soils, drainage,...
ers
Beatrix FarrandBeatrix Jones Farrand was a US landscape architect. Born into a prominent New York family, she married the famous Yale historian Max Farrand in 1913. She was the niece of Edith Wharton. Farrand's main teacher was Charles Sprague Sargent of Harvard's Arnold Arboretum...
and Percy Cane and feature a
tiltyardA tiltyard was an enclosed courtyard for jousting . Tiltyards were a common feature of late medieval castles and palaces...
(thought actually to be the remains of an Elizabethan water garden) and major sculptures, including examples by
Henry Moore Henry Spencer Moore OM CH FBA was an English sculptor and artist. He was best known for his abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art....
and Peter Randall-Page. There is an ancient yew tree (
Taxus baccataTaxus baccata is a conifer native to western, central and southern Europe, northwest Africa, northern Iran and southwest Asia. It is the tree originally known as yew, though with other related trees becoming known, it may be now known as the common yew, or European yew.-Description:It is a small-...
) reputed to be nearly 2000 years old and rumour has it that
Knights TemplarThe Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon , commonly known as the Knights Templar or the Order of the Temple , were among the most famous of the Western Christian military orders...
are buried in the graveyard there, although there is no evidence to substantiate this.
The estate comprises various schools, colleges and organisations, including
Schumacher CollegeSchumacher College was founded in 1991 in Dartington, Totnes, Devon, UK by Satish Kumar amongst others. It was named after E.F. Schumacher. It is an international centre offering transformative learning for sustainable living, and runs holistic education courses...
,
Dartington College of ArtsDartington College of Arts is a specialist arts institution near Totnes, Devon, South West England, specialising in post-dramatic theatre, music, performance writing and visual performance, focusing on a performative and multi-disciplinary approach to the arts. In addition to this, lecturing staff...
, Dartington Arts, the Summer School of music, the Cider Press Centre and High Cross House (open to the public). In North Devon the
Beaford CentreThe Beaford Centre is an arts centre located in Beaford, a small village in north Devon, England.For ten years from 1992 the Beaford Centre ran The Plough arts centre in Torrington. Since 2002, however, they have been independent organisations....
, set up as an Arts centre by the Trust in the 1960s to bring employment and culture to a rurally depressed area, continues to thrive.
The Hall now functions as a conference centre and provides
bed and breakfastA bed and breakfast is a small lodging establishment that offers overnight accommodation and breakfast, but usually does not offer other meals...
accommodation for people attending courses and for casual visitors. The cinema and the White Hart Bar and Restaurant are used by estate dwellers, residents from the surrounding countryside, and visitors alike.
Further reading
- Bonham-Carter, V. Dartington Hall: The Formative Years 1925-1957. (Phoenix Press 1958; Exmoor Press 1970)
External links