Dartington Hall near Totnes is offering tours of the Grade II listed gardens every Friday at 11am.

It’s a chance to discover the heritage, beauty and historical features.

The gardens cover 26 acres and there are 700 years of history covered in around an hour and a half.

Volunteer garden guide Matt White is one of around seven and says: “We go back to the Anglo-Saxons and Norman times, the Tudors and the time of Richard II in late Medieval times.

‘Next year we are celebrating the centenary.

“1925 was when the Elmhursts got here and restored the hall creating this massive utopian project.

‘It was probably the most influential, the best funded, best managed of anywhere in the world at the time.

Dartington Hall itself was restorted under the architect William Wear.

It was restored using a small team using oaks from the estate.

Matt continued: ‘They would have lifted everything using pulleys wearing nothing more than corduroy trousers and flat caps.

“They had the new invention of steel scaffolding which they used to restore the hall sympathetically to what it would have been in 1388 and 1400.

“In the tradition of the Arts and Crafts Movement, where you couldn’t get it done exactly, you’d respect the materals and use local stone and wood.

“If you needed modern stuff you would not try to hide that.

“For my money he was one of the experts of his time and was a very modest man.”

Visit: www.dartington.org