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It's amazing what you can find tucked away in drawers and cupboards.

For decades, boxes at Dartington Hall were left untouched. Inside them were old films of hundreds of hours of archive footage dating back to the 1920s, when the Elmhirsts bought the 1,200 acre estate in the heart of the South Hams countryside.

In the 1990s, the film was removed and taken to the South West Film and Television Archive in Plymouth for safe-keeping.

Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst at Dartington

Then, in 2008, the films came back to Dartington, when the process of watching, cleaning, restoring and digitising the film for public showing began in earnest.

It's still early days, but already the trust's archive team has discovered some real gems: footage of Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst overseeing the renovation of the hall and estate in the 1920s and '30s; film of theatre, arts and dance stars who stayed at Dartington during that era; and film of the blitz in Exeter.

There are 200 hours of film - 8mm, 16mm and 35mm - in this re-discovered collection, together with 500 hours of video from more recent decades. Some of it has never been seen before.

For the archive team, the job of sifting and sorting is painstaking - but highly rewarding.

As part of her job, trust archivist Heather McIntyre has pored over historic paperwork at the Dartington Hall Estate, and now the images are bringing all that history to life.

Dartington Hall as it is today

"It's exciting for me, looking after the papers and now seeing the film, and these people wandering around. And to have colour film from the late 1930s is extremely rare.

"What is also exciting is to be able to restore and clean the film so we can show them because we have the equipment in the Barn Theatre here to use the film.

"But we have saved the films just in time - they are right on the edge."

Each and every frame is being cleaned by film technician Jim Whittle. As soon as that is done, the film is to be digitised to preserve the footage and to enable public and website showings.

The archive is recognised as important both regionally and nationally because there are so few collections of archive film in the UK. The type of film also makes it of huge interest to enthusiasts of the early history of 'home videos.'

Colin Orr and Heather McIntyre

Film programmer at the trust, Colin Orr, said: "The funny thing is that at the time, they didn't think of it as important. And some people forget how groundbreaking and progressive the Elmhirsts were, with the schooling and farming methods here.

"But it's not just film of Dartington, there is film from Java, India, and David Lack's film in the Galapagos Islands.

"Some of the film has sound, some doesn't, and some have had soundtrack added."

The trust is hoping to tap into the Government's 拢24 million national archive scheme to help fund the restoration project.

As well as public film showings, and eventually making the footage available on the trust website, the team is also keen for the community to become involved by helping to identify some of the people in the film - perhaps even themselves, as has already happened!

For more information, visit the Dartington Trust's archive website which is linked from the top right of this page.

And to find out more about Dartington Hall and it's amazing history, take a look at the fact file on the right.

* Archive film and photos provided courtesy of Dartington Hall Trust Archive.