[Michael Barker's webpages and photographs are taken from email conversations, and shared with his permission]
I'm 84 in December this year [2020], but still remember a great deal about Hyde House and the Caldecott Community at Mersham le Hatch. Making the transition from Hyde House, Hyde Heath, Dorset, I remained with Caldecott Community and left in 1949 to return to London.
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My father was killed in World War II in North Africa fighting the Germans in the desert. My mother found a live-in job at a London hotel leaving me with a 75 year old lady: Mrs. Weller. A small gang of us kids were caught trespassing on the local railway depot and hauled up in front of a Justice of the Peace (Mr. Watson). When this guy heard that my Dad had been killed in the war, he separated me from the other three kids and had me interviewed with a person I now know to have been a Child Psychologist. A couple of weeks later I was up in front of him in the juvenile court, where he said to me and my mother that he would try to get me into Caldecott Community, which he did; when my mother took me on the train to Dorset's Wareham and my new abode away from London. I remember my mother pointing out the Queen Mary docked in Southampton as we sped through the countryside on a steam train. Years later, in 1963, I was playing in the orchestra that entertained the first class passengers en route to New York, and my first view of skyscrapers and the Statue of Liberty. I only took the gig so that I could listen to American jazz musicians in Greenwich Village during the overnight stopover at Pier 92. I was not disappointed because in 1966-7, I and a band of musicians went aboard the old Queen Elizabeth based in New York, doing cruises and spending the winter cruising the Caribbean and Mediterranean, thus avoiding the winter in England.
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To the right side of the page [Founders & Staff] was a list of newcomers headed by Mr. Gladstone, who, aside from being the nemesis of Benjamin Disraeli, was also the namesake of the instructor of the Caldecott Community carpentry shop at Mersham le Hatch. It was outside of the carpentry shop where I, climbing a rusty, broken drainpipe with a jagged edge protruding inflicted a 7 or 8 inch scar on my left thigh. Miss E, not being a qualified nurse, neglected to take me to a hospital and have the wound stitched up. This ugly scar has provoked many inquiries from medical people over the years, such that it is a truism to say that Mersham le Hatch has left its mark on me.
Also on the list is Helen Stocks. I believe that she was our governess at Hyde House, where we slept in a dormitory at the top of the house with an adjoining room occupied by Miss Helen. Her contribution to my journey though life is that she frequently read to us before lights out. I've never forgotten her rendition of The Master of Ballantrae by Sir Walter Scott. If you're still in contact with her, please tell her that from then in I became an avid reader and received a B.A. with Honors (Magna cum Laude) in Literature to add to my BSc in Business Administration from California State University Los Angeles (cum Laude).