Dartington Hall

The Dartington Hall Trust is located on a 1,200 acres estate near Totnes in Devon. The building, which was built in the late 14th century was largely derelict when acquired by Leonard Elmhirst (1890-1973) and his wife Dorothy Elmhirst (1914-1968). It took the best part of a decade to renovate and in 1935 the trust was registered. The estate consists of various schools including and visual and performing arts centre and an international summer school for music, dance and painting. In June 2010, Dartington College of Arts previously part of the estate and run by the trust was merged with University College Falmouth, formerly Falmouth College of Art located in Cornwall. Dartington's archives house the early records of the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts which had been established at the beginning of 1940 in war-time Britain. Alumni include Lucian Freud and his brother Clement Freud and due to Leonard Elmhirsts' friendship with the Bloomsbury Group, the place was often a retreat in the early days for the likes of Virginia and Leonard Wolf, Julian Bell, George Bernard Shaw and poet and novelist Rabindranath Tagore.