Collection: Papers of Leonard Elmhirst
Level: Series
RefNo: LKE/DCC
Extent: 7 boxes
Title: LKE Devon County Council
Date: 1925-1975

Description: Archive accumulated by Leonard Elmhirst in correspondence with Devon County Council (DCC) departments. Issues concern local government, including local education and elections. Elmhirst was elected as a county councillor for the Harberton Electoral Division in 1937, and continued to serve as a councillor until 1952 when he was advised to stand down for medical reasons. Included is a notebook with an account of Leonard Elmhirst's campaign for election as a county councillor in 1946, fought against Frank Crook, manager of the Barton Farm on the Dartington Hall estate.

Most records relate to the town of Totnes and the surrounding region.

There is extensive correspondence with W Elmslie Philip, DCC Chief Education Officer. As well as the Dartington Primary Church School, the papers cover the Totnes senior schools, and include the move to comprehensive education, with the creation of King Edward VI School in September 1966 from the amalgamation of King Edward VI Grammar School for boys, Totnes High School for Girls and the Redworth Secondary Modern School. (The school later became known as King Edward VI Community Collegel.) Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Elmhirst was chairman of the governors of the three Totnes secondary schools, and was chairman until 1973 of the Board of Managers of Dartington Primary Church School. There is much reference to the land at Redworth, new buildings, and the playing fields in Totnes. Material also refers to the introduction of agriculture as a subject in the syllabus of rural senior schools.

Box 4 contains records of Leonard Elmhirst's involvement with the administration of the Totnes remand home, Crichel Hostel. However much of this material comes under data protection and the papers are closed for 75 years dating from 1952. Elmhirst's dislike of corporal punishment is apparent.

Box 5 contains records of the Music Advisory Committee. In addition to Leonard Elmhirst, Dartington Arts Department administrator Peter Cox and music department head Imogen Holst also served on the Committee (Holst left Dartington Hall in 1951). From 1949 to 1965 the County Music Organiser was Doreen Senior. The Music Advisory Committee was dissolved in 1968. Its work was sufficiently well developed and accepted as a normal part of the education provision made by the local authority with music now established as an important subject in the curriculum of Devon schools.

For more information see our online catalogue reference LKE/DCC.

Access: Archives held by The Dartington Hall Trust are subject to Trust policies which generally follow normal document closure periods for public records. Records that are not governed by the Data Protection Act of 1998 and that are more than 30 years old are open for research. In addition, it is Trust policy that records of people still living are closed.