[Brought together and introduced by Gerald Moran in his blog post of June 1st 2025. Gerald's blog is here]
LEILA MARGARET RENDEL 1882 - 1969:
Elizabeth Lloyd wrote a history of Caldecott from 1911 to the death of Leila Rendel in 1969 (see here on the Caldecott Association's website) but she had written a brief tribute to Miss Leila following the 1969 Memorial Services. I set out below the text of that tribute.
Leila Rendel died, as she always said she intended to, 'in harness', having fallen in her bedroom just before taking breakfast at eight-fifteen with the Community's younger children as she had done for the past fifty years. Her fall resulted in a broken femur; this was successfully operated on but her heart did not stand the long operation and she died early the following morning.
There is so much that could be written about this remarkable woman; first and foremost a pioneer of her generation and an educator of genius in the art of communal living. Life at the Caldecott Community under Leila Rendel was indeed an education in itself and a very liberal one at that.
Her passionate concern for the well-being of every individual with whom she came into contact, and her interest in all the burning questions of the day, could be an inspiration or sword in the side of those less concerned, or who had not thought and perhaps did not wish to.
It was E.M. Forster who wrote, when reviewing a novel, that 'reading and re-reading has made me realise how many ways there are of being alive, how many doors there are closed to one, which someone else's touch may open.'
This is surely what Leila Rendel did so often for each succeeding generation at the Community.
Great tribute was paid to her life and work at the Memorial Service which was held at the Ashford Friends' Meeting House, when many people spoke about the different aspects of her life and the impression she had made on them: perhaps even greater tribute was to be seen in the Service held in London at St. Martin-in-the-Fields to which came so many representatives of every age from every generation who had been at the Community from 1911 to the present day. Many had travelled a long way to be there; some had brought their children.
The Address was given by Mary Stocks; speaking with her customary lucidity and felicity, and ending so aptly with the first verse of Blake's deceptively simple and beautiful poem from 'Songs of Innocence':
When the voices of children are heard on the green,
And laughter is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast,
And everything else is still.
It is owing to the life and work of Leila Rendel that 'voices of children' have always been heard at the Community and will continue to be heard.