Dartington

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dartington is a village in Devon, England. It is located south of Dartington Hall and about two miles (3 km) from Totnes. Dartington is home to an obsolete cider press (now the centrepiece of a shopping centre named for it) and a functional pub, The Cott Inn, which dates from 1300.

[edit] Dartington Hall

The site on which Dartington Hall stands has been continuously occupied for well over a thousand years.

Written records do not begin until the thirteenth century, but there is evidence of considerable activity in the area during the Roman occupation and the manor of Dartington is mentioned in a Royal Charter of 833 AD. It was held by the FitzMartin family between c.1100 and 1348.

In 1348 the manor reverted to the Crown, and in 1384 Richard II granted it to his half-brother John Holand. Soon afterwards Holand became an Earl and during the following two decades he made Dartington Hall into a great country house, laying out new buildings in the form of a huge double quadrangle, covering almost an acre. The modern Courtyard is a fragment of the buildings originally planned.

After John Holland was beheaded it stayed in the Holland family – going to John Holland, 2nd Duke of Exeter, whose active service included the Battle of Agincourt, and then Henry Holland, 3rd Duke of Exeter. The Hall then passed through Holland's widow Anne of York, Duchess of Exeter to her second husband, Sir Thomas St Leger, (executed at Exeter for his part in a rising against Richard III), 1476-1483. It then passed to the Crown to be held by a succession of owners and tenants. For short periods it became the property of two of Henry VIII's wives, the Catherines Howard and Parr.

In 1559 the Champernownes, a Devon family well connected during Elizabethan times, purchased the estate. Dartington was to remain theirs for the next three hundred years. Their wealth and influence dwindled until agricultural depression in the nineteenth century all but robbed them of a livelihood. At the beginning of the 20th century they were forced to sell much of their land, and in 1925 the remaining 800-acre (3.2 km²) estate was bought by Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst, to become the basis of their joint venture in rural regeneration.

When the Elmhirsts bought the estate it was badly run down and much of the Hall was in ruins. During the first few years of their ownership of the Hall, the Elmhirsts spent much time and money restoring the estate and building new properties on it.

This text is taken from 'A Short Guide to the Buildings and Architecture of Dartington Hall' which is no longer available but a copy of which is held in the Dartington Hall Archive and available to researchers.

Also located in Dartington is the Dartington College of Arts, which was founded in 1961.