Phyllis Monica Potter was co director of the Caldecott Nursery in Cartwright Gardens with Leila Rendel. It later became the Caldecott Community and transferred to Kent. Phyllis remained co-director for some years.
Her parents were John Wilson Potter and Jane Boyd Thompson Potter. Both were very wealthy. Phyllis was always able to live from her own means. Mary Stocks suggests that Phyllis helped Leila Rendel financially with the Caldecott Nursery.
Phyllis was one of 9 children, and having wealthy parents, there were nurses and nannies amongst other servants. All the children became very wealthy and lived amongst the high society of the time. Two of her siblings emigrated, and all left vast sums of money in their respective Wills.
Phyllis met Leila Rendel at Whitefields Tabernacle in the Tottenham Court Road, and with their love of children they jointly created a nursery next door to Leila’s aunt Edith’s Creche in Burton Crescent, later called Cartwright Gardens.
They ran the Caldecott Nursery. “Miss P. M Potter to whose untiring efforts are due to the entire credit and success of the School…..”
In 1911 Phyllis adopted Mary Ann Christina Adams at the age of 3 years. Mary’s mother had died when she was only 7 days old. Mary went on to become an eminent physician.
Phyllis Potter had a beautiful singing voice and was able to raise funds for Caldecott with her singing, love of music and the children’s acting plays, which she produced. They enacted "King Saul" at the Rudolf Steiner Hall in London in late 1931.
When Phyllis left Caldecott in 1931, she continued to be in contact with Leila, and Caldecott children were invited to her home, Chatham Hall Farm, in Essex, and enacted plays put on by Phyllis. Both Elizabeth Lloyd and Mary Stocks say that Liela and Phyllis disagreed strongly about religious matters, Phyllis having an orthodox Anglicanism approach, so much so that they parted company. Leila continued to run Caldecott as a non-denominational Community. She later became a Quaker.
Phyllis Potter, From Elizabeth Lloyd, "Story of a Community"
Born in 1886, was the daughter of a ship-owner, living in a large South Kensington house with his family of nine children. At the age of twenty-one, Phyllis, who from all accounts was a strikingly handsome young woman, dark-haired and with a searching eye which missed little, went up to West Hill College, near Birmingham, to take a Teacher-Training course in Sunday School work. West Hill was one of a group of the Selly Oak Colleges which were associated with the Quaker Cadburys. Phyllis was enrolled as one of the first students. A Mr. Wainwright, now a man in his late eighties, has one of the first recollections of the young Miss Potter: he writes, "In 1903 in the Tottenham Court Road there was still standing an ancient Chapel built in 1756; it was Non-conformist and was known as the Whitefields Tabernacle. It was taken over by a group known as the London Congregational Union who wished to rebuild it in 1903 and turn it into a modern institutional church: it was to be the spearhead of the militant Non-conformity of the time and with an emphasis on the social gospel and youth. By 1908 the Sunday School at Whitefields was ripe for reform. My father was asked to become superintendent of the school and help was asked from West Hill. So Miss Potter was sent to take charge of the work among the younger children." It was here, at this Whitefields Tabernacle in 1908, that Phyllis Potter and Leila Rendel met. [At Charlton Court] I was charmed by Phyllis Potter, with her beautiful speaking and singing voice, her air of regality and what I realised even then, her kindness and deep interest in a child.