Dartington Hall
Dartington Hall in
The site is the headquarters of the Dartington Trust, which currently runs a number of charitable educational programmes, including Schumacher College, Dartington Arts School, Research in Practice and the Dartington Music Summer School & Festival. In addition to its own live arts and learning programmes, the Trust uses Dartington Hall to host other groups and as a venue for retreats.
Dartington Hall estate
The estate was held by the Martin family between the early 12th and mid-14th centuries, but on the death of William Martin in 1326,[2] the feudal barony of Dartington escheated to the crown and in 1384 was granted by King Richard II to his half brother John Holland, 1st Duke of Exeter (c.1352–1400),[3] created in 1388 Earl of Huntingdon and in 1397 Duke of Exeter.
Historic buildings
The 1st Duke built the
20th century and the Dartington experiment
The influence of Rabindranath Tagore on Leonard Elmhirst, and the interests and money of his wife Dorothy, led them to undertake an experiment in rural reconstruction at Dartington Hall. It is said that Tagore had become familiar with Dartington during his travels in England and influenced Elmhirst in his selection of the estate for purchase.
The energy and investments of the Elmhirsts and a number of significant innovations in rural regeneration became organised departments working on the estate. The innovations included "the social and spiritual "questing" that underwrote support for peace movements, Eastern mysticism and ultimately social science; the progressive educational values that led to the founding of Dartington School; the artistic commitments that made the place an innovator in pottery and textiles and – by 1938 – a refuge for sixty or so avant-garde Continental dancers, sculptors and playwrights; and the agricultural ventures which, if never profitable, became a seedbed for research."[7]
In 1928, Leonard Elmirst began collaborating with Alice Blinn, who worked for Delineator Home Institute to create a home economics training centre and modernise domestic activities of the village. Blinn recommended initiatives including education, apprenticeship programmes, a laboratory, a modern kitchen, cafeteria, laundry, and lavatories, based on what was available in a modern American home. Unable to persuade Blinn to move to England, Elmhirst abandoned the plan. Blinn's recommended kitchen equipment was installed but arranged in a typical English fashion because the headmaster's wife did not like the design.[8]
In 1935, the Dartington Hall Trust, a registered charity, was set up in order to run the estate.
High Cross House was built in 1932 as a home for the headmaster of Dartington Hall school. It was designed by Swiss-American architect William Lescaze and is now regarded as an important modernist building. It is Grade II* listed.[9][10]
Aller Park, the original Dartington Hall School, was built 1929–31 and designed by Ides Van Der Gracht of the New York firm of Delano and Aldrish. Intended as a junior school, it was built in a lavish Americanised Tudor style. Soon afterwards came Foxhole, the senior school built 1931–32, and boarding houses Blacklers (1933), Chimmels (1934) and Orchards (1935) in a straightforward modern idiom. A modern extension was added to Orchards, and a drama hall built nearby – both of 1964. East of the medieval Hall an arts centre and dance school with a large hall was built 1930–32, with several additions in 1938 and 1966. To the North of the Hall, Higher Close Students Centre was built in 1963 adjacent to the present main car park. Huxhams Cross and Broom Park were built 1932 as estate workers houses. At Shinners Bridge is the central Office of the estate (1935) and the Sawmill (1931-32). The Cider Press Centre was built 1976 for the growing tourist trade.[1]
The estate today
In addition to historic buildings the estate has a number of legacy 20th century buildings from the Elmhirst's social enterprises, including the defunct Dartington Hall School, which closed in 1987, and High Cross House which is now a base for Dartington Trust's teaching staff and academics. Other buildings are being used by various departments at the Trust, including the Old Postern which is home to Schumacher College, and other buildings around the Hall which host the Arts at Dartington, the Dartington Music Summer School & Festival, and Research in Practice. The Cider Press Centre, a shopping centre at Shinners Bridge, is also run by the Trust.
In September 2022, undergraduate students returned to Dartington estate with the launch of the BSc Regenerative Food and Farming,[11] the first degree in England to focus specifically on sustainable approaches to agriculture.
The Hall and medieval courtyard functions in part as a conference centre and wedding venue and provides bed and breakfast accommodation for people attending courses and for casual visitors. The Barn Cinema and the White Hart Bar and Restaurant are used by estate dwellers, residents from the surrounding countryside, and visitors alike.
In North Devon, the
Dartington Music Summer School & Festival
Dartington Music Summer School & Festival is a department of the Dartington Trust. It is both a festival and a music school with an "ethos of bringing together top-quality performers and composers to work with students and amateur musicians in concerts and classes in a relaxed, informal atmosphere."[12] Participants, both amateur musicians and advanced students, spend the daytime studying a variety of different musical courses, and the evenings attending (or performing in) concerts. In addition to instrumental and vocal masterclasses, there are courses at various levels on subjects such as composition, opera, chamber music, conducting and improvisation. Courses include choirs, orchestras, individual masterclasses, and non classical music such as Jazz, Salsa and Gamelan. Composition teachers have included Luciano Berio, Luigi Nono, Bruno Maderna, Harrison Birtwistle, Peter Maxwell Davies, Brian Ferneyhough, Witold Lutosławski and Elliott Carter.
Dartington Gardens
The gardens were created by Dorothy Elmhirst with the involvement of major
Former activities
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. It was to have "no corporal punishment, indeed no punishment at all; no prefects; no uniforms; no Officers' Training Corps; no segregation of the sexes; no compulsory games, compulsory religion or compulsory anything else, no more Latin, no more Greek; no competition; no jingoism."[13]
With time more academic rigour was imposed, but it remained progressive and had mixed success educating the children, sometimes the more wayward ones, of the fee-paying parents. A noted alumnus was
Son of the founders,
W. B. Curry was headmaster of the school from 1931 to 1957, and wrote two books about it, The School, published by The Bodley Head in 1934, and Education for Sanity, published by Heinemann in 1947.[17]
The author Dennis Wheatley novelised the activities of some people based at the school in his 1947 book The Haunting of Toby Jugg. This was a supernatural thriller which sensationalised some real-life events before the war, setting them at a fictional school called "Weylands". Years later, it was revealed that these events had attracted the attention of MI5 in a declassified report called "The Case Against Dartington Hall".[18]
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 in whose time the school attracted considerable negative publicity – not least owing to his calling the police to the school to combat alcohol and drug abuse taking place, the death by drowning of a student, and his wife's modelling for pornographic photographs – the school suffered a dramatic drop in recruitment. The school was forced to close in 1987.[19] After the school's closure, a number of staff and students set up Sands School which still carries some of the principles that Dartington once had.[citation needed]
It has been suggested that the school 'Knotshead' in the novel A Private Place by Amanda Craig was based upon Dartington Hall school, as the events in the book are similar to those that occurred within the final years of Dartington Hall.[20]
Literary editor Miriam Gross wrote an account of her time at the school in her memoir, and also published in the May 2011 edition of Standpoint magazine.[15][dead link]
Tagore
Inspired by a long association with Rabindranath Tagore's Shantiniketan, where Tagore was trying to introduce progressive education and rural reconstruction into a tribal community, the Elmhirsts set out in the 1920s on a similar goal for the depressed agricultural economy in rural England.[21]
In May 2010,
Dartington College of Arts
Dartington College of Arts was a specialist arts institution based at the hall from 1961 to 2010, with an international reputation for excellence, focusing mainly on the
. In 2021, the Trust re-opened the Dartington Arts School with five new Masters programmes, including Arts and Place, Arts and Ecology and Poetics of Imagination.Gallery
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Courtyard north entrance
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View of gardens and Hall
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Tower of the former St Mary's church
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Zen garden
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North corner of Courtyard
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Gardens in winter
See also
- D. G. Champernowne, mathematician and economist, buried in the church yard
- Dart, a poem by Alice Oswald (Dartington Hall's gardener)
- Schumacher College, a department of the Trust based primarily at the Old Postern on the Dartington estate.
References
- ^ a b Buildings of England - Devon. Authors - Nikolaus Pevsner and Bridget Cherry. Published 1989
- ^ Emery, Anthony. "Dartington Hall, Devonshire" (PDF).
- Hoskins, W. G., A New Survey of England: Devon, London, 1959 (first published 1954), p. 381.
- ^ Historic England. "Dartington Hall (1108353)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 16 September 2019.
- ^ Pole, Sir William (d.1635), Collections Towards a Description of the County of Devon, Sir John-William de la Pole (ed.), London, 1791, p. 296.
- ISBN 0-902386-10-7.
- ISSN 0260-9592. Retrieved 9 November 2022.
- ISBN 978-1-871516-95-1.
- ^ Morris, Steven (4 April 2019). "Devon's 1930s High Cross House to reopen for culture festival". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 April 2019.
- ^ Historic England. "High Cross Hill House (Grade II*) (1220922)". National Heritage List for England.
- ^ "Dartington college welcomes undergrads back for first time in 12 years | totnes-today.co.uk". Totnes Times. 5 October 2022. Retrieved 9 November 2022.
- ^ "Rolf Hind/Juliet Fraser/Quatuor Bozzini review – potency and sadness". The Guardian. 18 August 2022. Retrieved 9 November 2022.
- ^ Young, Michael (1982), The Elmhirsts of Dartington, Routledge and Kegan Paul, p. 131.
- ^ "Sir Clement Freud". The Daily Telegraph. London. 16 April 2009. Retrieved 23 December 2009.
- ^ a b Miriam Gross (May 2011). "An Experimental Education". Standpoint. Archived from the original on 17 October 2011. Retrieved 25 October 2011.
- ^ Hayward, Anthony (10 December 2008). "Oliver Postgate: Creator of 'Bagpuss', 'The Clangers' and 'Ivor the Engine' who turned children's television into an art form". The Independent. London. Retrieved 1 May 2010.
- ISBN 0951273507
- ^ "The 2014 Dennis Wheatley Convention". Archived from the original on 27 August 2015. Retrieved 17 October 2015. Dartington Hall report at the end.
- TheGuardian.com. 30 June 2005.
- ^ Waugh, Harriet (September 1991). "School for Scandal". The Spectator. Retrieved 11 February 2019.
- ^ Sen, Amartya (28 August 2001). "Tagore and His India". Nobelprize.org. Archived from the original on 9 October 2011. Retrieved 25 October 2011.
- ^ Sotheby's to Sell Tagore Collection of The Dartington Hall Trust, artdaily.org. Retrieved 12 October 2011.
- ^ Sotheby's unveils a group of Modern British art from the Dartington Hall Trust Collection, artdaily.org. Retrieved 16 November 2011.
- ^ Row as Dartington Hall auctions off its treasures guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 16 November 2011.
- ^ On the sale of works of art from the collection Archived 2012-01-29 at the Wayback Machine dartington.org
Further reading
- Anonymous, Dartington, Webb & Bower, 1982.
- Bonham-Carter, Victor (1970) [1958]. Dartington Hall: the Formative Years 1925-1957. Dulverton (Somerset): Exmoor Press. ISBN 0-9500133-9-0.
- Wheatley, Dennis. The Haunting of Toby Jugg (1947). Critical novel, based on life at the school.
- Punch, Maurice (1977). Progressive Retreat: a Sociological Study of Dartington Hall School, 1926-1957, and Some of its Former Pupils. London: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-21182-4.
- ISBN 0-07-100905-1.
- MacManus, Steve (2017). Elmsworld. My Life At Dartington Hall School 1963-1971, eBook Publication, ISBN 9781973315742.