22 June 2024
I never lived at Lacton Hall (nor at the Paddocks), so what can I say about it? Obviously numerous children lived there at least part of their times at Caldecott, but many did not. That latter category includes ones that may have seen it from outside but never went inside.
Lacton Hall had a series of uses for Caldecott over the years. Since 1957 Caldecott had a family-type group at the Paddocks, with James and Tessa King in charge there since September 1962. Mike Clover owned the Paddocks and wanted to run his own children's home there from September 1965. So Caldecott had to find somewhere else. Lacton Hall was on the market for £32,000. Caldecott bought it for half that sum. Caldecott had no real money, hence it was borrowed from the bank on mortgage. Miss Leila said "God will provide". A year later two elderly ladies donated £16,000 to Caldecott upon selling up what had been a children's home.
James and Tessa King ran the group at Lacton Hall as described in the relevant article by Tony Inwood on the website (now a chapter in his book). They moved to Hatch in 1967 and so the group was then run by John and Leela Hort until the end of 1970, after that by Mr and Mrs Bray. There were times when Lacton Hall had to be evacuated for a while and children were found space at Hatch. For instance, I believe that in Autumn 1973 the Brays fell out and left, as did their two assistants.
Robert and Pauline Hilton had run the West Wing group at Hatch but in January 1974 they were in charge of reopened Lacton Hall and the group of children. That came to an end, so Fran and Ian Lovett took over until July 1983.
When I was at Caldecott or visiting shortly afterwards, it was usual to see fairly often at Hatch staff and children from Lacton Hall. I saw no need to go into Lacton Hall then. I did sometimes visit there when it was run by Fran and Ian, but by then I was busy with work, hence my visits to Caldecott increased in brevity and rarity, combined also with time visiting others in the vicinity.
When some boys from Lacton Hall were 14 or more they tended to come to the Colt House. By 1982 that was the only part of Hatch not occupied by the mixed use groups that had started in 1970. The position was reversed in September 1983 when Chris Alexander's group of older adolescent boys and girls from the Colt House moved to Lacton Hall, so the LH mixed age group mostly moved to the Colt House and became Hornbeam. Lacton House was built on part of the LH grounds and officially opened in 1985 by the Queen Mother [see Queen Mother's Visit in 1985 later in these blogs].
In conjunction with arrangements for moving from Hatch, in August 2001 the older adolescents vacated Lacton Hall, some moving to West Haven (Summer House) and some to Lakeview pending that group's move. As I understand it, Mayfield group had moved into the vacated West Wing in 1997 but in 2002 Mayfield occupied Lacton Hall and did so until vacating in 2011 as a final era of its use by Caldecott Foundation. Pine Lodge and Willow Trees are still held by the Foundation.
My final point is that the Caldecott Association's website and the Association's archive have oddly little regarding Lacton Hall in all the years after 1967. We could do with memories, photos etc for ex-Caldecotts generally.