Dartington Hall
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The Dartington Hall Trust, near Totnes, Devon, United Kingdom is a charity working for the advancement of the arts, sustainabaility 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 mediaeval hall was built between 1388 and 1400 for John Holand, Earl of Huntingdon, half-brother to Richard II. After John was beheaded, the Crown owned the estate until it was acquired in 1559 by Sir Arthur Champernowne, Vice-Admiral of the West under Elizabeth I. The Champernowne family lived in the Hall for 366 years.
The hall was mostly derelict by the time it was bought by Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst in 1925. They renovated the buildings, replacing the magnificent hammerbeam roof on the Great Hall, 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 Trust, a registered charity, was set up, and it has run the estate since that time.
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[edit] 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 Young, a founder of Which? and the Open University. Lucian Freud also attended the school for two years, but mostly played truant. Martin Bernal 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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] The Dartington Gardens
The gardens were created by Dorothy Elmhirst with the involvement of major landscape designers Beatrix Farrand and Percy Cane and feature a tiltyard (thought actually to be the remains of an Elizabethan water garden) and major sculptures, including examples by Henry Moore and Peter Randall-Page. There is an ancient yew tree (Taxus baccata) reputed to be nearly 2000 years old and rumour has it that Knights Templar are buried in the graveyard there, although there is no evidence to substantiate this.
The estate comprises various schools, colleges and organisations, including Schumacher College, Dartington College of Arts, Dartington Arts, the Summer School of music, the Cider Press Centre and High Cross House (open to the public). In North Devon the Beaford Centre, 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 breakfast 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.
[edit] Gallery
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[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Anonymous, Dartington, Webb & Bower, 1982
- Young, Michael, The Elmhirsts Of Dartington, The Creation Of A Utopian Community, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982
[edit] Further reading
- Bonham-Carter, V. Dartington Hall: The Formative Years 1925-1957. (Phoenix Press 1958; Exmoor Press 1970)
[edit] External links
- Dartington Hall Trust
- Dartington Hall
- Dartington Arts
- Dartington International Summer School
- Dartington College of Arts
- Battle to save celebrated cradle of cutting edge art
- Alumni website
Coordinates: 50°27′03″N 3°41′37″W / 50.450939°N 3.693686°W
