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ABOUT DARTINGTON ARCHIVAL COLLECTIONS
The Dartington Hall Trust Archive is remarkably complete. To give a flavour of the depth of information within the archive, each series has been separately described and can be accessed through the Archival collection guides.
The founding trustees were confirmed letter writers who employed a succession of private secretaries to assist them in dictation. From the 1950s, historian Victor Bonham-Carter was employed to organise the Trust Archive and write a history of the Dartington Hall 'experiment' (as it was commonly known). By that time the Archive consisted of about 900 manuscript boxes containing Trust administrative reports and records, and the personal and professional correspondence of Dartington Hall trustees. Working with C Eric McNally and Robin Johnson, Bonham-Carter divided the Archive into four principal collections, Dartington Hall Trust Records, Commercial, Leonard Elmhirst's records and correspondence, and Dorothy Elmhirst's letters. Each collection contains information on most aspects of the Trust's activities. The collected Archive reveals pioneering approaches to British agriculture, animal husbandry, and forestry.
Dartington was primarily an educational project. All aspects of the estate were to be used in educating pupils of the Dartington Hall School, which was founded 'for adventure', in 1926. The Dartington Hall experiment attracted many unconventional people. The Archive holds letters to and from Henry Moore, Rabindranath Tagore, A S Neill, Aldous Huxley, Imogen Holst, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and Bernard Shaw, and many other intellectuals of the twentieth century.
Artists who came to work and teach at Dartington in the 1930s included refugees from Nazi Germany, among them the Ballets Jooss, Austrian sculptor Willi Soukop, and stage designer Hein Heckroth. Dancers who came to live and work on the estate included Rudolf Laban, Margaret Barr, Leslie Burrowes, and Louise Soelberg among others. Bernard Leach established the Dartington Pottery. American painter Mark Tobey was brought over from the Cornish School in Seattle to teach. Michael Chekhov founded his school of acting at Dartington. Cecil and Elisabeth Collins came to paint.
From these beginnings an Arts Department grew that eventually became the Dartington College of Arts.
When first purchased, the Dartington Hall estate was in a state of neglect. The restoration of the medieval buildings at Dartington Hall and the construction of new ones, employed a variety of architects and used traditional and modern building methods. Architects active at Dartington included William Weir, Oswald Milne, William Lescaze and Walter Gropius. Papers, plans, and photographs cover this extraordinary activity.
The Dartington Hall Trust is a registered charity no. 279756. Company no. 1485560
Registered Office: The Elmhirst Centre, Dartington Hall, Totnes, Devon TQ9 6EL United Kingdom.
Telephone 01803 847000; Fax 01803 847007;