Background

Maurice Anthony Ash was born on October 31, 1917, in Hazaribagh, India, to the family of Wilfrid Cracroft and Maud Ash. His father Wilfrid Cracroft Ash was a civil engineer responsible for large projects in India. His grandfather, Gilbert Ash, founded the construction company Gilbert-Ash. Ash had also a brother, mathematician and brewer Michael Edward Ash, and a sister, Marjorie Ash.

Education

Maurice Anthony Ash was educated at Gresham's School at Holt in Norfolk. He read economics at the London School of Economics and at Yale, acquiring an abiding contempt for what he saw as a pseudo-science.

Career

At the London School of Economics, Ash met Michael Young (Lord Young of Dartington) who became a lifelong friend. Young introduced him to the Dartington Hall, where Ash served for many years as a trustee and later chair. The decrepit buildings and rundown 1,000-acre estate of Dartington, near Totnes in Devon, had been bought by Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst in the 1920s. With the Indian philosopher Rabindranath Tagore's ideas and Dorothy Elmhirst's money - she was an heiress to the American Whitney fortune - the couple rescued the medieval hall, put up buildings, developed the estate with landscape gardening, forestry, and farming, created studios and workshops for arts and crafts and started the world-famous school which was considered, according to taste, progressive and enlightened or shocking and depraved.

At Dartington, Ash met, and in 1947 married, the Elmhirsts' daughter Ruth. They started off by farming in Essex. Ash was interested in the postwar plans for new towns, and his admiration for Ebenezer Howard and the ideas behind Welwyn Garden City involved him with the Town and Country Planning Association. After his chairmanship of the association, he became its vice-president. Thanks to Ash the Town and Country Planning Association produced the stimulating and influential schools' magazine Bulletin of Environmental Education, which was edited for 10 years by Colin Ward.

In 1962, the family moved to Devon and bought Sharpham House, a 1776 Palladian building designed by Robert Taylor. Sharpham is as desirable a house as is to be found anywhere, and the hospitality of Ruth and Maurice Ash lived up to it.

In 1972, after Dorothy Elmhirst died, Leonard went to America and Ash became chairman of the Dartington Trust. Various enterprises were in financial free fall, and the once-great school went haywire, filling tabloid front pages before tragi-comically self-destructing. While some Dartington activities had to be given up, many vigorous new ones started. As well as Dartington glass there was pottery, music, the Schumacher College and the Cider Press for crafts.

Meanwhile, at Sharpham there was a 100-acre farm run on Rudolf Steiner principles, where pasture, grass, cows, milk, and cheese led satisfyingly one to the other, while vineyards produced red and white wine. It was also variously the home of a Buddhist community and college, and of the Robert Owen Foundation, a charity which provided an agricultural experience for adults with mental disabilities.

In 1978, Maurice Anthony Ash also became the chair of the new Green Alliance environmental interest group. Ash server in position till 1983.

Ash published eight books including "Regions of Tomorrow: Toward the Open City," "A Guide to the Structure of London," "New Renaissance: Essays in Search of Wholeness," "Journey into the Eye of a Needle," and "Fabric of the World."

Achievements

• Maurice Anthony Ash served for many years as a trustee and later chair of Dartington Hall. There, he demonstrated the ideal of a monastery-turned-country estate as a center for the integration of learning, agriculture, industry, the arts, and spiritual growth. Under his tenure, Dartington Hall housed or sponsored numerous ventures, including a textile mill, a pottery, a glass-blowing factory, the Schumacher College for ecological studies, and the Beaford Arts Centre.
  
  Ash is also widely known with his writings on planning and the environment include the books "Regions of Tomorrow: Toward the Open City," "A Guide to the Structure of London," "New Renaissance: Essays in Search of Wholeness," "Journey into the Eye of a Needle," and "Fabric of the World."
  
  

Works

More photos

• book

  • New Renaissance: essays in search of wholeness 1987
  • A guide to the structure of London 1972
  • Journey into the Eye of a Needle 1989
  • The Fabric of the World: Towards a Philosophy of Environment 1992

Views

Ash devoted his life to the creation of communities that would conserve the environment, sustain the local economy and infrastructure, and nurture the spirits of those who dwelled therein. He rejected the notion that town planning should be determined by political or business interests, and his inherited wealth enabled him to pursue an alternative path. Though he described himself as simply a farmer.

Membership

• 

  Henry Moore Foundation , United Kingdom

Personality

With his soft-spoken, gentle manner, long silences that unnerved some people, and tendency to quote Wittgenstein, Ash could seem to be more erudite ruminant than a man of action. Yet his years as chairman of the council and executive of the Town and Country Planning Association, of the trustees of Dartington Hall, and the Green Alliance showed, he believed in fighting for the broadly civic and environmental causes that he held dear. He did so with grace, humor, and respect for other people's views.

Quotes from others about the person

• Richard Boston: "Self-effacing, Ash preferred to work behind the scenes. He wore many public hats and privately had his finger in many more pies. He helped a great many people - myself included - materially or with advice, useful contacts or simple acts of kindness. He could also help people without making them ungrateful, which is rarer than may be supposed."

Interests

• Philosophers & Thinkers

  Rabindranath Tagore, Ludwig Wittgenstein

• Sport & Clubs

  hockey

• Music & Bands

  Benjamin Britten

Connections

Ash met the Elmhirsts' daughter Ruth and in 1947, they were married. They had a son and three daughters.

Father:

Wilfrid Cracroft Ash

Mother:

Maud Ash

Wife:

Ruth Ash

Grandfather:

Gilbert Ash

Brother:

Michael Edward Ash

Sister:

Marjorie Ash

Friend:

Michael Young

Maurice Ash met Michael Young at the London School of Economics, they became lifelong friends.