Uncommon chief executive Martyn Evans has been appointed estate development director of the 1,200-acre Dartington Hall Estate in Devon.
Evans will run the property, land and enterprise network, which comprises more than 140 small businesses on the estate.
Founded in 1925, the estate began as an experiment in rural community building by Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst. He was the son of a Yorkshire vicar and she was one of the richest women in America, a Whitney heiress from New York. They came to Devon to create an experiment in rural living and learning around a medieval hall, which they restored from a ruin to be their home.
They built a progressive school and an art college and started businesses including a cider press, a furniture company, a textile mill and a glass-making company. Some 42 listed buildings are on the estate, which include High Cross House, a modernist building by American architect William Lescaze.
When the Elmhirsts died – she in 1968 and he in 1974 – they left the estate to the Dartington Hall Trust, which was put under a new management and trustee team 18 months ago to develop a strategy to revive it.
Evans said: “I visited last November at the invitation of the new chief executive, Rhodri Samuel, to join a property workshop on how development of the estate’s property could contribute to its sustainable financial future. I was bewitched.”
He has been working on the estate for two days a week since January helping the team with its development strategy, but starting this week will be full time.
He said: “My work with Richard Upton at Cathedral [then U+I] has been the most inspiring work I have done in my career. When I left last year, I wanted to find a new challenge to use everything I’d learned from the work we did together. I found it here.
“Dartington is owned by a charitable trust and so while the development work we’ll do to bring the estate back to life has to be financially sustainable, it is also, at its heart, values-driven. We’re going to build homes – the most sustainable, community-focused possible – and create businesses, drive a new cultural agenda, build a new world-class education programme, support the 140+ businesses currently located on the estate and develop its agroforestry and farming business. It will all be done with a social justice agenda that sits right at the heart of everything we do.”
To send feedback, e-mail Louisa.Clarence-Smith@egi.co.uk or tweet @LouisaClarence or @estatesgazette
