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Dartington Parish is to be found in the South Hams area of South Devon.

The earliest recorded mention of what is now known as Dartington was in 833 AD in the records of King Egbert of Wessex. By then, the area had been successfully occupied by the Anglo-Saxons and the region between Plymouth and the Dart was already known as the Hams - a region of farm settlements in the valley bottoms. Although Dartington was still probably subject to marauding visits from the Danes, it prospered and grew rich. By the time of the Norman conquest, Dartington was clearly one of the most prosperous settlements in the county and Doomsday records show the present pattern of settlement with scattered hamlets and farmsteads was already established by then. Indeed there never has been a village of Dartington.

For the next 500 years the fortunes of the owners of Dartington were entwined with the struggles for wealth and power which flowed through Europe and in 1388 the building of Dartington Hall was designed to reflect the position and wealth of its owner, the Lord of the Manor of Dartington, probably a larger area than the present parish.

In 1554 the Champernowne family came into possession of the manor and over the next 400 years eleven generations occupied and quietly managed the hall and its lands.

The agricultural depression of the 19th and early 20th Century led to the breakup of the wider Dartington Estate, to the departure of the Champernownes and the sale of what was left of the Estate to the Elmhirsts. They set up an experimental project concerned with rural regeneration, education, and the arts and it is for these activities that Dartington is now generally known in the wider world.

(Ref: Anthony Emery: Dartington Hall (1970)).