#100 Devon with Josh Widdicombe (Part 2)

Oh What A Time...

Pop! Pop!

Comedy, History, Education

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 27 January 2026

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This is Part 2! For Part 1, check the feed!

Yes, despite the fact we’re closer to episode 200 than 100, this really is episode 100! (We’d planned this ep a long time ago but only just got round to recording).

For the first time ever we’re joined by a guest and it’s Devon native and friend of the show, Josh Widdicombe.

In this episode we’ll discuss everything Devon related: Devon’s own Sir Francis Drake, the educational experiment that was Dartington Hall and one of the west country’s most notorious prisons.

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Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Oh, what a time is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else, ad free,
0:06.4	plus access to our full archive of bonus content, two bonus episodes every month, early access
0:11.9	to live show tickets and access to the Oh Water Time group chat. Plus, if you become an Oh Water
0:16.9	Time All-Timer, myself, Tom and Ellis will riff on your name to postulate where else in
0:21.7	history you might have popped up for all your options you can go to patreon.com forward slash
0:27.1	oh what a time
0:27.9	hello and welcome to part two of Devon, where our guest this week is Josh Whitacom,
0:44.6	who has suggested as our subject, Devon, of course. And Josh, you have a new podcast.
0:50.5	Yes, listen to the Museum of Pop Culture. It's about much lower-browbrow stuff than this. It's about popular culture told over it. More parts than you think it deserves. And Crane is on the first episodes, which are about Mr. Blobby. And it's available on podcast apps. And no one wants plugs to go on any longer than that. So let's get on with hearing about Devon.
1:11.7	All right, part two I'm going to tell you now about Dartington Hall.
1:16.4	Yeah, I want to know about this.
1:17.9	Known as Devon's Engine of Ideas.
1:20.0	Did you know it, Josh, you've been there for two weddings,
1:21.9	but did you know of it as a place of education?
1:25.3	No, it's quite a good place to cater for large numbers.
1:32.2	It's got an art centre nearby as well, but it doesn't feel like a huge place of ideas.
1:38.4	Well, yes, Dartinson Hall sits on a hill above Totnesse in Devon, and it's a magnificent medieval manor. It was originally
1:45.4	built in the 1300s by the first Duke of Exeter. For centuries, it was exactly what you'd
1:50.4	expect in an aristocratic country estate. But in 1925, that all changed when a pair of Anglo-American
1:56.5	millionaires who had a very different plan for it. And their names were Dorothy and Leonard Elmhurst. And they didn't want it to be a stately home. They wanted it to be a social experiment, a place where you could rethink education and rebuild rural communities and plug the arts straight into the bloodstream of society. Which I would say is that it feels like a very Devon thing. Like seafaring or whatever. is in before. Yeah, yeah. Seathings, like, I don't know. Like lay lines, all that stuff, the arts. The arts. I'd say the arts has got it. The arts is a big deal around the country, isn't it? Basically, when I go to Glastonbury and I see hippies walking around. It seems Somerset. Yeah. But I mean, you know, people walking around looking like Newton Faulkner,
2:36.8	dressed in clothing that looks like is made out of postal bags.
2:42.1	This kind of interesting artistic fair is what I associate with Devon.
	...

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