Green shoots at the Green Table

Independence Day July 4 was not only celebrated by Americans this year but by the man at the helm of the multi-award winning Cott Inn, Mark Annear.

It was the day he took over The Green Table, the cafe in the centre of the Dartington Estate. Mark was approached by one of the Elmhirst family to take it on. He used to eat there and loved it himself so took the plunge and has taken a ten year lease from the Trust.

In fact Mark has known the building and the grounds since he was a child. His mother Diane used to run Ryders cafe, gallery and convenience store for the students in the mid 1980s. She was a director for two years. “She was here for three or four years and so we were here, this was our playground, down by the river and in the pool. It is like coming home,” he said.

Now, his sister Vicky is the general manager and he has brought new staff in to work alongside the staff inherited from the previous incarnation, including Mattie, Esme and Amin, a Syrian refugee who lives on the estate.

The Green Table suffered when last year the Trust brought in its change team to staunch the Trusts’ unsupportable financial losses. Flexible hours contracts which were imposed didn’t suit everyone. The old managers and some staff left at a time of shortages in the hospitality industry and the cafe’s service dipped.

It’s now back to a thriving business and the Sunday I visited there was a queue round the block. Bread is from local bakery Hylstens and the food is all prepped in the kitchen.

Mark has plans to bring in more customers, with events in mind (he can’t say what just yet). He’s installed Starlink so laptop users can get their work done.

Der Grüne Tisch

The origins of the name go back more than 90 years. In 1933 Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst saw a London performance of a radical anti war ballet choreographed by German performer Kurt Jooss. The name was The Green Table.  The couple invited Jooss, stage designer Hein Heckroth and Jooss’s mentor Rudolf Laban to come and live in Dartington and escape the Nazi regime being spread by the new Chancellor, Adolf Hitler.

Warren House in Warren Lane was built for Jooss and his family, and he taught at Dartington Hall until after the war, when he went back to Germany. The cafe was named The Green Table in 2017 and while the inside has been revamped by Mark and his team, the name will remain.