Totnes is a market town and civil parish at the head of the estuary of the River Dart in Devon, England, within the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It is about 5 miles (8.0 km) west of Paignton, about 7 miles (11 km) west-southwest of Torquay and about 20 miles (32 km) east-northeast of Plymouth. It is the administrative centre of the South Hams District Council.
Great Torrington is a market town in Devon, England. Parts of it are sited on high ground with steep drops down to the River Torridge below, with the lower-lying parts of the town prone to occasional flooding. Torrington is in the centre of Tarka Country, a landscape captured by Henry Williamson in his novel Tarka the Otter in 1927. Great Torrington has one of the most active volunteering communities in the United Kingdom.
Dartington Hall in Dartington, near Totnes, Devon, England, is an historic house and country estate of 1,200 acres (4.9 km2) dating from medieval times. The group of late 14th century buildings are Grade I listed; described in Pevsner's Buildings of England as "one of the most spectacular surviving domestic buildings of late Medieval England", along with Haddon Hall and Wingfield Manor. The medieval buildings are grouped around a huge courtyard; the largest built for a private residence before the 16th Century, and the Great Hall itself is the finest of its date in England. The west range of the courtyard is regarded nationally as one of the most notable examples of a range of medieval lodgings. The medieval buildings were restored from 1926 to 1938.
Barnstaple is a river-port town and civil parish in the North Devon district of Devon, England. The town lies at the River Taw's lowest crossing point before the Bristol Channel. From the 14th century, it was licensed to export wool from which it earned great wealth. Later it imported Irish wool, but its harbour silted up and other trades developed such as shipbuilding, foundries and sawmills. A Victorian market building survives, with a high glass and timber roof on iron columns.
North Devon is a local government district in Devon, England. Its council is based just outside Barnstaple, the district's largest town. The district also includes the towns of Ilfracombe, Lynton and Lynmouth and South Molton along with numerous villages and surrounding rural areas.
Cullompton is a town and civil parish in the district of Mid Devon and the county of Devon, England. It is 13 miles (21 km) north-east of Exeter and lies on the River Culm. In 2011, the parish as a whole had a population of 8,499, while the built-up area of the town had a population of 7,439.
The Plough Arts Centre is a theatre, cinema and art gallery in Torrington, North Devon, England.
Dartington Crystal is a British manufacturer of crystal glassware and is based in the town of Torrington in North Devon, England. The company manufactures their glassware using traditional glass blowing techniques.
James Ravilious, was a British photographer, who specialised in recording the rural life of north Devon.
Dartington is a village in Devon, England. Its population is 876. The electoral ward of Dartington includes the surrounding area and had a population of 1,753 at the 2011 census. It is located to the west of the River Dart, south of Dartington Hall and approximately two miles (3 km) north-west of Totnes. Dartington is home to an obsolete cider press, the Cott Inn, a public house dating from 1320, and Dartington Hall.
Leonard Knight Elmhirst was a British philanthropist and agronomist who worked extensively in India. He co-founded with his wife, Dorothy, the Dartington Hall project in progressive education and rural reconstruction.
Beaford is a village and civil parish in the Torridge district of Devon, England. The village is about five miles south-east of Great Torrington, on the A3124 road towards Exeter. According to the 2001 census the parish had a population of 393, compared to 428 in 1901. The western boundary of the parish is formed by the River Torridge and it is surrounded, clockwise from the north, by the parishes of St Giles in the Wood, Roborough, Ashreigney, Dolton, Merton and Little Torrington.
Dartington College of Arts was a specialist arts college located at Dartington Hall in the south-west of England, offering courses at degree and postgraduate level together with an arts research programme. It existed for a period of almost 50 years, from its foundation in 1961, to when it closed at Dartington in 2010. A version of the College was then re-established in what became Falmouth University, and the Dartington title was subsequently dropped. The College was one of only a few in Britain devoted exclusively to specialist practical and theoretical studies in courses spanning right across the arts. It had an international reputation as a centre for contemporary practice. As well as the courses offered, it became a meeting point for practitioners and teachers from around the world. Dartington was known not only as a place for training practitioners, but also for its emphasis on the role of the arts in the wider community.
Maurice Anthony Ash was an environmentalist, writer, farmer, and planner. He was chairman of the Town and Country Planning Association and of the Dartington Trust and founder/chairman of mindfulness & nature charity The Sharpham Trust.
The South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SWASFT) is the organisation responsible for providing ambulance services for the National Health Service (NHS) across South West England. It serves the council areas of Bath and North East Somerset, Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council, Bristol, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, North Somerset, Plymouth, Isles of Scilly, Somerset, South Gloucestershire, Swindon, Torbay and Wiltshire.
Furse is a Devon surname as well as one of several names for the evergreen shrub more widely known as gorse. The name is believed to be derived from Old English: fyrse. The name is often compared to that of Furze that is also found in Cornwall. The first recorded Furse appears in the South-west circuit of the Domesday Book as Robert Furse.
Peter Randall-Page RA is a British artist and sculptor, known for his stone sculpture work, inspired by geometric patterns from nature. In his words "geometry is the theme on which nature plays her infinite variations, fundamental mathematical principle become a kind of pattern book from which nature constructs the most complex and sophisticated structures".
Dartington International Summer School is a British summer school and festival of music held on the medieval estate of Dartington Hall, Devon, England. It is a department of the Dartington Trust.
The Cornwall National Landscape covers 958 square kilometres (370 sq mi) in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom; that is, about 27% of the total area of the county. It comprises 12 separate areas, designated under the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949 for special landscape protection. Of the areas, eleven cover stretches of coastline; the twelfth is Bodmin Moor. The areas are together treated as a single Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB): all AONBs have been rebranded as National Landscapes since November 2023. Section 85 of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 places a duty on all relevant authorities when discharging any function affecting land within an AONB to have regard to the purpose of conserving and enhancing natural beauty. Section 89 places a statutory duty on Local Planning Authorities with an AONB within their administrative area to produce a 5-year management plan.
North Devon's Biosphere Reserve is a UNESCO biosphere reserve in North Devon. It covers 55 square miles (140 km2) and is centred on Braunton Burrows, the largest sand dune system (psammosere) in England. The boundaries of the reserve follow the edges of the conjoined catchment basin of the Rivers Taw and the Torridge and stretch out to sea to include the island of Lundy. The biosphere reserve is primarily lowland farmland, and includes many protected sites including 63 Sites of Special Scientific Interest which protect habitats such as culm grassland and broadleaved woodlands. The most populous settlements in its buffer area are Barnstaple, Bideford, Northam, Ilfracombe, and Okehampton.
