1954: Dartington Hall School, Totnes
The Aitkenhead’s relationship with Dartington
The history of the Dartington Estate in Devon started around 1925 and continues to this day and goes way beyond the setting up of Dartington Hall School. Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst opened the first school with nine pupils in September 1926. The first 50 years were documented in the Dartington Press Ltd publication: A Dartington Anthology.
For different reasons John and Morag placed three of their four children at schools away from Kilquhanity during their secondary years. Neill Aitkenhead attended Dartington from 1954; Val attended Hyndland School, Glasgow and latterly Kirkcubright Academy; Lois attended Monkton Wyld.
According to Val in the early 1950s Kilquhanity was struggling financially and had opened its doors to social services referrals resulting in several boys being placed who would have attended approved schools. The feeling was that Neill might be influenced by so many of these boys attending Kilquhanity that it was for his emotional protection that he went to Dartington. Val herself moved away from Kilquhanity at a young age as at that time there were no other girls of her age group attending.
Neill’s time at Dartington was not without its trials and tribulations. Initially he was homesick and several letters from both headteachers Bill Curry and later on Hubert A.T Child, refer to considerations of Neill’s education and time at Dartington.
Bill Curry retired as Headteacher in 1957.
The new Headteacher, Hubert (Hu) A. T. Child wrote several letters to John regarding his request for John to submit a chapter to the proposed publication, The Modern Independent School.
Several letters followed concerning submission deadlines for the chapter!
In 1969 Royston Lambert succeeded H.A.T. Child as Headteacher.
In 1969 Leonard Elmhirst and his sister visited Kilquhanity.
On the 3rd October 1969 John replied to Leonard Elmhirst’s letter.
The complete letter reads:
‘x Greetings to you and trust this finds you well and the school thriving.
Dear Leonard Elmhirst, x
To refer back to your visit here and your letter following that, containing your kind offer to help with some project of ours . . . . I am to tell you that we are off to a new session these past two weeks, and have in mind to build ourselves a new commonroom for the ‘outsiders’ – that is our adolescents. (You may remember the green garage we converted for this purpose and are using at present – much too cramped. This we intend to use as a cycle maintenance workshop.)
Would it be along the lines of your offer to suggest that your trust might help us to buy the materials? The log-cabin which our juniors use is the kind of building we have in mind. Perhaps you remember that – entered from beneath, and built in proper backwoods style. Anyway we have the labour on hand and I’ve no doubt the ability also to design the right thing; and, for myself, I consider this is exactly the kind of challenge cum opportunity our teenagers require.
I’ll be very glad to know and pass on to our staff meeting the reactions of your trustees to this suggestion.
Sincerely yours, John Aitkenhead.
Leonard replied on the 13th of October 1969 and again on 7th November 1969
Sadly I have no details of the Dartington Trustees decision and a log-cabin was never built on the site of the green-garage.
The Fourteenth Co-educational Conference in 1971 was held at Dartington at which, amongst others, John was scheduled to speak.
The final archive piece I have on Dartington is a copy of the Dartington Voice magazine.
Amongst other articles this May 1983 edition heralded the arrival of Lyn Blackshaw as the new headteacher along with his wife Beth.
By September 1983 Dartington had attracted such negative publicity – not least to the calling in of the police to combat alcohol and drug abuse, the death by drowning of a student, and Blackshaw's wife's modelling for soft pornographic photographs – that the school suffered a dramatic drop in recruitment and was forced to close in 1987.
