Summary

Transformer House, now substation, built in around 1930 to handle the distribution of electricity from Leonard Elmhirst's turbine generator on the river Dart, to the north, bringing electicity to the Dartington Estate.

Description

Former electricity transformer house (now substation), built in the 1920s for Leonard Elmhirst, to supply the Dartington estate.

MATERIALS: roughly coursed rubble stone with a slate roof.

PLAN: rectangular, orientated roughly east-west.

EXTERIOR: a single-storey building with a pitched roof. Elevations are blind; that facing south onto the roadside has a series of pilasters forming five bays; offset slate-capped plinth. Upstands to the gable ends have an eaves flourish and moulded kneelers. Roof with a large flush window to each bay (four to south), and a raised full-length apex ventilator. East gable end with doorway with moulded stone lintel; timber plank double doors. Rear elevation blind; west gable adjoining Barton Studio (not listed).

INTERIOR: exposed brick walls, painted. Roof with trusses with coupled principal rafters and steel tie rod and post. Concrete floor with timber boards to cable channels and pits.

History

At the centre of the Dartington Hall Estate are the surviving parts of the great C14 medieval house (listed Grade I, wider area scheduled), which was almost derelict by the time it was purchased by Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst in 1925 from the Champernowne family, who had owned the estate since 1559. The Elmhirsts set about using their substantial wealth to renovate Dartington Hall, beginning The Dartington Experiment, an ambitious programme of rural regeneration based on modern methods of agriculture and forestry, progressive education, arts and literature. Under their patronage, Dartington became a magnet for émigré artists, craftspeople, thinkers, musicians, dancers and actors during the interwar period, and it developed into a vibrant cultural community and a centre of innovation and influence. The couple made Dartington their home for the rest of their lives.

The Elmhirsts were advised when they bought the Estate that it was too remote to receive a mains electricity supply. Leonard Elmhirst, who had some experience of small-scale electricity generation, had Town Mills, a former corn mill on the River Dart, 1km north of the hall, converted into an ‘automatic turbo electricity generator’. A substation, marked on Gardner’s 1931 Estate plan as a ‘transformer house’, was built to handle the local distribution around the estate. The generator functioned until the 1970s. The building remains in its original use.

Reasons for Listing

The Dartington Hall Substation is listed at Grade II, for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* as a well-crafted and carefully detailed industrial building, taking a traditional vernacular form appropriate to its location and using good-quality local materials.
* as a good representation of the style of the first estate buildings erected for the Elmhirsts;
* as a functionally legible example of a building type with little representation on the List.

Historic interest:

* as a product of the ‘Dartington Experiment’, representing the Elmhirsts’ progressive vision and innovative spirit in bringing a reliable electricity supply to support the breadth of activities on the estate.

Recommended Books

• 
  For the Record
• 
  Somerset: North and Bristol: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  [(Shropshire)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1958)
• 
  The green guide for historic buildings: how to improve the environmental performance of listed and historic buildings
• 
  Kent: West and the Weald: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Gloucestershire 2: The Vale and The Forest of Dean: Vale and Forest of Dean Pt. 2 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)