open all year round
Monday - Saturday
9.30am - 5.30pm
Sunday 10.30am - 4.30pm
trading at
Shinners Bridge
Dartington TQ9 6TQ
t 01803 847500
Totnes Bookshop
40-42 High Street
Totnes, Devon TQ9 5RY
t 01803 863273
heritage
Our story begins in 1925 when two individuals, Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst, sharing a vision of a revitalised countryside, purchased an ancient estate: Dartington Hall upon whose lands the Cider Press Centre stands. At Dartington, they supported initiatives across a wide range of endeavours, from education to local employment, research and the arts. They started a school and a College of Arts, made a now famous garden and launched at Dartington – using the beautiful fourteenth century Courtyard as its base – the renowned Dartington International Summer School of Music. Dozens of other projects were initiated: experiments in forestry, a textile mill in 1930s, Dartington Glass in North Devon.
In the mid seventies, their successors, the Dartington Hall Trustees, decided to open a retail centre on a site alongside the Bidwell Brook where Bernard Leach had constructed a pottery and written: ‘A Potters Book’. Here also, in the thirties, the Trust formerly manufactured apple juices – predecessors of all the millions of cartons now sold, and the Dartington Cider. It is because of this history of pottery and cider production that we sell crafts and are called the Cider Press Centre even though actual cider making ceased here fifty years ago. The Cider Press Centre sells a range of craft work, books, fine foods, Dartington Crystal, garden plants and other objects for the home. On site there is also a Cranks wholefood restaurant and a shop selling children’s toys. We sell these things because we care about quality: the quality of a locally made cheese no less than a hand-thrown jug.
At the Cider Press Centre we also strive to ensure that our trade is ethical, as well as fair, in that it supports neither exploitation nor environmental degradation, that it helps the local community and the profits of any purchase are beneficially spent. All profits from the Cider Press Centre are covenanted to the Dartington Hall Trust and are used to support a wide variety of charitable activities – enabling, for example, trees to be planted, Third World students to study, or a city based youth orchestra to visit Dartington and perform in its Great Hall. At the Cider Press Centre we believe you cannot have a commitment to values unless this extends beyond the products sold and to how these profits are spent
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The Cider Press Centre is operated by The Dartington Trading Company Ltd. (Reg No. 1218378) a subsidiary of the Dartington Hall Trust, a company limited by guarantee, registered in England as a charity (Charity No. 279756) Registered Office: The Elmhirst Centre, Dartington Hall, Totnes, Devon TQ9 6EL United Kingdom. Telephone 01803 847500; Fax 01803 847007;