We are very sad to report that William Elmhirst passed away on 29 February, while travelling overseas.
William, known as Bill, was the youngest of the two children that Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst had together, and was born on 26 February 1929.
The Trust’s flag was flown at half-mast from 2.30pm on Wednesday 16 March for a week as a mark of respect.
Obituary: William Elmhirst
Reproduced with kind permission of The Times
William (“Bill”) Elmhirst, a sensitive and spiritual millionaire, was the last surviving child of Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst — the founders of the utopian community at Dartington in Devon, which was a magnet for composers, poets, dancers, playwrights and artists.
Influenced by the ideals of his mother, Dorothy, he became the patron of the dancer Rudolf Laban, who fled Nazi Germany to settle with the Elmhirsts. William paid for and studied at Laban’s original school in Weybridge, the precursor of the Trinity Laban Conservatoire for Music and Dance in south London. His life changed direction, however, the day he attended a séance involving a ouija board. Seeking enlightenment, Elmhirst wrote to Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, the victor of the Battle of Britain and a well-known spiritualist. At Dowding’s recommendation, he joined the Society of the Inner Light, moved to London and became the society’s secretary, until he sensed a spirit guide urging his return to Dartington.
There, he attended a retreat on spiritual healing and met Vera Strachan, a reputed seer. Elmhirst became her ardent follower and, after a short-lived first marriage to the musician Heather Williams, married Strachan. Together they began a movement, Solar Quest, which focused on restoring, with divine guidance, the balance of the Earth. An attempt to run Solar Quest from Dartington, however, was blocked by all the trustees including Elmhirst’s father, Leonard. Aggrieved, he left, telling the Daily Express: “My relations with my family are ruined. I am deeply hurt.”
After a period spent in America he moved to Apple Court, a house in Porlock, Devon. Strachan died in 1992 and, three years later, Elmhirst married Heather Hopkins, an occupational therapist who now runs a retreat centre.
Born in London in 1929, William Elmhirst attended the co-educational boarding school at Dartington, which offered “no corporal punishment, indeed no punishment at all”. Shy, he took solace in nature, becoming an avid birdwatcher. He was conscripted towards the war’s end as a miner at Betteshanger Colliery in Kent. He later trained as an actor and performed with a young Alan Ayckbourn.
If the rift with his father never healed, the breach with The Dartington Hall Trust enjoyed periods of reconciliation. Elmhirst helped to fund a residency for the musician Ravi Shankar and also a production by Dartington International Summer School of Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia. Bearded and invariably clad in a long Indian-style shirt, Elmhirst, a kind man with a humming, slightly wistful voice, never relinquished his ideals and strong principles. Even to friends, he was somewhat inscrutable. His fortune was thought to total about £60 million.
William Elmhirst, philanthropist, was born on February 26, 1929. He died of a heart attack on February 29, 2016, aged 87.
