Qualla: Dartington Hall

Dartington Hall: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DIYeditor, CC BY-SA 4.0. Rabindranath Tagore once stayed at Dartington. So did sixty refugee dancers, sculptors, and playwrights from Continental Europe in 1938. Lucian Freud spent two years here as a schoolboy. Oliver Postgate, who would go on to create Bagpuss and the Clangers, was a pupil. Anthony Blunt, the Cambridge spy, recruited the founders' son at Cambridge as a Soviet agent. And under the great hammerbeam roof of the Great Hall - one of the finest medieval rooms in England - a string quartet has played, a Shakespeare scene has been staged, and a wedding party has danced, almost every week since 1925. The story of Dartington is the story of what happens when you put 800 acres of medieval England in the hands of two people who genuinely believe they can change the world.

Read more: Dartington Hall on Qualla

Image: DIYeditor | CC BY-SA 4.0

Dartington Hall: The Hall the Duke Built

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit (Lobsterthermidor (talk) 13:14, 9 January 2016 (UTC)), Public domain. The Martin family held the feudal barony of Dartington from the early 12th century until 1326. When the last male heir died, the estate escheated to the crown, and in 1384 King Richard II granted it to his half-brother John Holland, made Duke of Exeter in 1397. The Duke built the...

Read more: Dartington Hall on Qualla

Image: (Lobsterthermidor (talk) 13:14, 9 January 2016 (UTC)) | Public domain

Dartington Hall: The Elmhirsts Arrive

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dougsim, CC BY-SA 4.0. Leonard Elmhirst was a Yorkshireman who had worked with Rabindranath Tagore on rural reconstruction in Bengal. Dorothy Whitney was a New York heiress, widow of the American statesman Willard Straight, and one of the richest women of her generation. They married in 1925 and bought...

Read more: Dartington Hall on Qualla

Image: Dougsim | CC BY-SA 4.0

Dartington Hall: The School That Would Not Punish Anyone

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Own Herby talk thyme, CC BY-SA 4.0. Dartington Hall School opened in 1926 with a manifesto unlike any in England: no corporal punishment, no punishment of any kind. No prefects, no uniforms, no Officers' Training Corps. No segregation of the sexes. No compulsory games, no compulsory religion. No Latin, no Greek. No...

Read more: Dartington Hall on Qualla

Image: Own Herby talk thyme | CC BY-SA 4.0

Dartington Hall: The Gardens, the Yew, and the Henry Moores

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Derek Harper, CC BY-SA 2.0. Dorothy Elmhirst created the gardens with the American landscape designer Beatrix Farrand and the English designer Percy Cane. They restored what they took to be a medieval tiltyard and was probably the remains of an Elizabethan water garden. They installed sculptures by Henry Mo...

Read more: Dartington Hall on Qualla

Image: Derek Harper | CC BY-SA 2.0

Dartington Hall: The Trust Continues

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Colin M Wood, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Dartington Hall Trust was established as a registered charity in 1935 to run the estate, and runs it still. The Trust has funded Schumacher College, the Dartington Arts School, the Beaford Centre, the Dartington Crystal factory in Great Torrington, and dozens of other venture...

Read more: Dartington Hall on Qualla

Image: Colin M Wood | CC BY-SA 3.0